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HEALTH 

Through Natural Methods 


By EDWIN J. ROSS 


Published by 

Natural Health Bureau 

Formerly THE AMERICAN HEALTH SOCIETY 
Endorsed by the 

cylmerican Naturopathic Association 
DR. BENEDICT LUST, President 




PRICE, ONE DOLLAR 












I 




Through Natural Methods 


By EDWIN J. ROSS 



Published by 

We Natural Health Bureau 

Formerly THE AMERICAN HEALTH SOCIETY 
Endorsed by the 

cy4merican Naturopathic Association 
DR. BENEDICT LUST, President 








Copyright 1924, by 

EDWIN J. ROSS 

New York, N. T. 


(g)ClA7925el 


Printed by 

BOTWEN PRINTING CO. 

368 Sixth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 


INTRODUCTION 


Physical man is made of the air he breathes, the water 
he drinks, and the food that he eats, chiefly the latter. 

It is easy to understand that a person, trying to live 
on candy exclusively, would have trouble. At first, with 
the stomach and teeth and secondly, throughout the body. 
It is also easy to understand that it would be difficult to 
get along on a diet of pastries, gravies, pie and cake, ice 
cream, pepper, salt, spices and condiments. Such a diet 
seems too preposterous for consideration. Anyone can 
realize the harm of eating such foods exclusively. 

It may be said of course that although such a diet 
would be highly injurious taken by itself, yet in combina¬ 
tion with other articles of food, these elements of diet have 
their natural place. They unquestionably have their place 
in the diet of the average civilized person of today. For 
the whole diet of today is wrong, and the whole is hardly 
any worse than these apparently worst parts. 

Modern man has departed very far from a natural 
diet. Natural man, that is,—the savage, lived largely ac¬ 
cording to his instinct. He focind his food growing on 
the trees and bushes, or sprouting from the ground. When 
he wanted meat, he was forced to hunt for it. He had to 
run up hill and down dale and cover great stretches of 
ground before he could bring down the animal he intended 
to eat. This animal was in the best of health through 
leading a free, open air life and eating its natural foods 
without the interference of man, and as a rule, it was 
devoured only a few hours after it had been killed. An 
active out-of-doors man or woman, living on absolutely 
fresh meat and eating few other foods, all of which were 
simply prepared, could thrive on such a diet, 


3 



Today, however, man attempts to live upon animal food 
that has been dead a long time; that was artificially raised 
and fattened, and that was, as a result, in very poor health 
when slaughtered. He likes his meat fried or roasted or 
otherwise prepared, by all the complicated methods of 
modern cookery. He likes his meat well covered and sur¬ 
rounded by alien sauces and a combination of various fried 
and cooked vegetables. He likes to begin his meal with 
one kind of food and finish it with another. He wants 
many and varied combinations in the forming of each dish. 
He likes to drink water, preferably ice water, during his 
meal, with which to wash down mouthfuls of food, and 
to finish up with some hot beverage, usually consisting of 
a combination of water, milk, sugar and coffee, or water, 
milk, sugar and tea. 

He likes to eat bread and to cover his bread copiously 
with butter at his meal. He wants a combination of white 
fiour, egg yolk, various analine chemicals, whipped cream, 
white sugar and some kind of fruit all combined into a 
cake or pie, along with the rest of his meal. Frequently 
he follows all this with a cigarette or a cigar or a pipe 
which helps to lessen the discomfort which is bound to 
follow this sort of a meal. 

Primitive man spent most of his time in the open air, 
led an active life and ate simple food. Modern man sits 
indoors, leads an inactive life and tries to live on varied 
and complicated, denatured foods. 

Primitive man had great strength, a finely molded body 
and good health as long as he lived. His teeth were in his 
mouth to the day he died and his hair stayed on his head. 
His powers and functions were unimpaired throughout his 
life except in the last days of his earthly stay. He ate 
with splendid appetite, slept soundly, was clear eyed and 
keen sighted and was as happy as his limited intelligence 
permitted him to be. 

Modern man, with a greatly developed brain has a 
poorly developed body, very weak digestion, comparatively 
poor appetite, bad teeth, poor eyesight, poor scalp, sleeps 

4 


badly, wakes badly, is weak, nervous and sickly. He spends 
a good part of his time in the sick bed. He spends a great 
deal more of his time earning money to pay for doctors, 
medicines, dental attention and optical attention. All this 
time he is continually in fear of complete incapacitation. 
Still man has developed greatly in intelligence, in his pro¬ 
ductive powers, and his general humanity. Evidently 
something is wrong. There must be some lesson which 
our ancestors, the primitive men, could teach us. 

We must realize that each civilization of the past be¬ 
gan to die as soon as it arrived at the period of greatest 
luxury and ease. In other words, as soon as man had 
succeeded in divorcing himself as completely as possible 
from the simpler and more natural things, especially with 
regard to his food, decay set in and the whole structure 
of the civilization soon crashed into ruin. There must be 
some lesson to be learned from this, and this lesson is 
evidently that luxury and refinement, in foods at least, does 
not pay beyond a certain point. Surely when civilization 
becomes artificialization, man can no longer live and remain 
in good health. Because man is himself a natural product 
and he can only live on the products of nature. Further¬ 
more these natural products must be left as much as pos¬ 
sible in their original state. 

When man shall succeed in creating a new race by 
combining the elements that lie in the mud from which 
man sprung. When man shall succeed in creating other 
men in the chemical laboratory or in the kitchen where 
his foods are now made, then this synthetic product of man, 
will be able to live on the present day synthetic foods and 
on the wonders of the modern table; but until such a time, 
the individual who wishes to be healthy, should learn to 
understand the intention of Nature. The laws of his life 
have not changed in recent centuries. Man must study 
and obey Nature and live as nearly as possible in accord 
with the laws created by the power that has created him. 


5 


HEALTH AND DISEASE 
Who Is Healthy And Who Is Sick? 

The question of what constitutes health has puzzled 
many people, though at first hand the average person 
would be prepared to say that the answer is ridiculously 
easy. It would indeed seem that everyone should be able 
to recognize a healthy person at sight and likewise one 
who is ill. However, there is really no more puzzling 
question than this. An individual may seem to be in per¬ 
fect health and suddenly fall ill and almost as suddenly 
die or go into a decline. Another person may seem sickly 
and ailing, may in fact appear to be not far removed from 
the grave and yet continues to live for many years. 

This peculiar fact is responsible for the current belief 
that the question of life and death, of sickness and health, 
are not at all in the hands of the individual, but that some 
peculiar power dictates who shall be well or ill, who shall 
live and who shall die. It would be a beautiful thing 
indeed if this were so. If the fates should decree that 
the evil and unworthy should die young and that the good 
should live on to a ripe old age. It is a sad but true fact 
however that both the good and the bad die young or live 
on side by side. 

Nevertheless there are laws that govern life and health 
and if these laws are observed, a long and a healthy life 
is possible. If they are ignored, sickness and disease is 
the result. Though it is never wise to predict sickness 
or an early death for anyone, as the powers of the body 
are often far greater than they seem. On the other hand 
good health and long life can be predicted and can be had, 
if the laws of vitality and health are observed. 

In other words, there is no certainty that any given 
individual will die shortly as a result of abuse of these 
laws. There is however, a certainty that an individual 
will live long and remain in good health, who will live up 
to these laws. 

Here we arrive at the only true method of judging 
health or longevity. It is only necessary to discover 

e 


whether the individual is living naturally and sensibly or 
not. 

The Killing Habits 

If one should overeat habitually or eat the wrong foods 
or stay indoors overmuch, fail to exercise or walk suffi¬ 
ciently, worry too much, use drugs or alcohol, or over¬ 
indulge in tobacco or go to excess in sex relationship or 
habitually overwork and not get sufficient rest or sleep, 
then one can be sure that life will inevitably be shortened. 

Exactly how much life will be shortened in such a 
case depends on each individual, and it is never possible 
to state precisely how much injury has been done to any 
given individual by such modes of living. 

Healthy Habits 

On the other hand, any individual who will exercise 
daily in a sensible manner, take long walks at least three 
or four times a week and do at least a little walking every 
day in the open air, who will eat the right foods and 
sleep in a comfortable bed for at least eight hours out of 
every twenty four with the windows open to admit of a 
strong current of fresh air through the room, and who 
will conduct himself sensibly with regard to work, play, 
sex and all other aspects of life, is practically certain to 
live long and to remain in as nearly perfect health as 
can be readily imagined. 

It might be argued that a person living the latter 
life would find it pretty dull and uninteresting, but this 
is not so. It is only because the majority of people are 
accustomed to excesses of one kind or another, especially 
food excesses, that it is hard to picture the greater and 
surer joy of a less nervous existence. 

It is the story all over again of the opium smoker 
who cannot understand how anyone can get any joy out 
of life without resorting to the opium pipe. He knows 
that for him, now that he is accustomed to opium, all 
other joys fade into insignificance beside the dreams in¬ 
spired by his pipe. The vast majority of people however, 


7 


manage to get along without opium and live longer and 
remain in better health without it, and the very thought 
of being the victim of such a drug, inspires horror in the 
mind of the normal individual. 

To have perfect health, it is necessary to get away 
from the idea that certain destructive foods are essential, 
simply because they have become habitual with us. Let 
us not try to reason as the drunkard often does, that alcohol 
is good for us, that it has many sterling virtues, or that 
on the other hand, wrong eating and overeating are essential 
if we are to continue to hold our place in the world. 

The drunkard must find some kind of justification for 
what he does as he cannot escape from the clutches of 
his vice. While being the victim of alcohol, he tries to 
imagine himself the victor. He tries to tell himself and 
sometimes others as well, that he drinks because he likes to 
and not because he has to. He is ruled by his vice but he 
can hardly be blamed for trying to picture himself as the 
ruler. 


Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Mortality Rates 

Insurance companies periodically publish statistics 
showing the rate of mortality amongst the insured and 
when these are compared with the general mortality statis¬ 
tics for the entire country, we find that there is hardly 
any difference. It appears that those who have passed 
the medical test for insurance are on the whole, little 
better off than the vast mass of the uninsured, a great 
number of whom could not pass these tests. 

It is also a well known fact that many who are passed 
in these tests as being sound and in good health, die within 
a year or two after passing these examinations. 

In the various armies of the world, every effort is 
made to select only those best fitted for a military life. 
They must be healthy, fairly strong, young, and capable 
of understanding and carrying out orders: A considerable 
number of these young men in the very bloom of youth, 
die each year even during peace time, and another con- 


$ 


siderable number are incapacitated by disease. Frequently 
in our own lives, we have met with the experience of 
seeing a young, robust man or woman examined by a 
physician or a group of physicians for some reason or an¬ 
other and pronounced fit and perfect or at least in fairly 
good health. We have seen this individual attacked by 
pneumonia or influenza or heart disease or what not, and 
pass away as though they were aged hulks or weak and 
frail,—disease ridden creatures. To see a friend of ours 
thus suddenly fall ill and die is to leave us wondering at 
the uncertainty of life. We begin to ask ourselves, ‘Ts 
there any test, technical or otherwise, that can really de¬ 
termine what is health or what is disease? Is there any 
protection against a sudden onslaught of these dreaded 
visitations?” The answer is that there is a method of 
judging as to what our fate shall be, that at least there 
is a sure way of protecting ourselves against disease and 
of prolonging life until real old age has gradually sapped 
our vitality. 

One thing is certain and that is, that the old medical 
way of judging as to whether an individual is sound and 
healthy or not, is not the perfect way. There is something 
wrong, and every physician in his own practice can realize 
this. He daily sees patients who seem to have barely a 
shred of vitality left, drag on a miserable existence year 
after year. 

On the other hand, he sees apparently robust people 
die at the first onslaught of some acute ailment. He oc¬ 
casionally sees a man of fifty go through a siege of pneu¬ 
monia, followed by pleurisy and live,—and perhaps in the 
same day, sees a man of thirty or a boy of nineteen seized 
in a similar way and dying in a day or two. 

Such experiences often incline the physician to take a 
fatalistic view of the whole situation and to say to him¬ 
self that, ‘there is no telling who shall live and who shall 
(tie,—which one has the power of resistance to disease and 
whibTi one has not.' But strictly speaking, this is not true. 
It is always possible to say who will be well and who 


9 


shall remain well. In other words, just how strongly the 
power of life burns in any individual can hardly be gauged. 
That this power can be fed however and that the fire can 
burn on in practically every living individual until that 
individual is seventy, eighty or ninety years of age or even 
more, is not only a possibility but very nearly an absolute 
certainty. 

We must live up to the unalterable laws of life. We 
must eat, work, sleep, play, and love, so as to live, and 
not so as to sap and exhaust our resources, and bring 
about a premature decay of our powers, and ultimately a 
premature death. 

As in the world of finance, we can use up our lifers 
capital in a few years, or starting even with an insufficient 
amount, we can develope and improve it, so that we can 
pass many who started with a far greater sum of health 
and vitality, and who seemed to have a far better chance 
of improving themselves still further. 

These others however have done as the majority does. 
They have rested on their oars. They have not understood 
that to stand still is to go backwards, for the world is 
always moving ahead. Do not stand still. Catch up with 
the new movement towards a sensible readjustment of our 
lives so as to bring them more in accord with nature. In 
this harmony we shall find new happiness, better health 
and lengthened years. 

Those who live properly are well and will continue to 
be well. Those who live wrongly, are sick now and will 
be worse later. 



10 


CAN DIET CURE DISEASE? 

The question is often asked—“How can you cure 
disease?” “How can you repair wasted tissue through 
diet?” 

Our bodies are created largely out of the food that 
we eat. Each individual cell of the body gets its share of 
this food, which is brought to it by our blood. Our blood 
is in turn directly nourished from our food. When disease 
is present in the body, the cells and the tissues and the 
blood are being attacked, injured and destroyed. Were it 
not for the power of the blood and cells to fight against 
disease, the entire body would be quickly destroyed. Nature 
has provided these powers and forces within the body 
that struggle continually to keep it in good health. If, 
while this struggle is going on we eat such foods as are 
easily handled and are quickly turned into the right kind 
of blood and cellular material, then the body has a readier 
chance to recuperate. 

On the other hand, it follows that any food which is 
difficult to digest and full of poisonous materials will im¬ 
pede the efforts of the blood and cells to cure themselves 
and will assist in the further progress of disease. 

What to do in Acute Disease 

It is best in any acute condition not to eat at all, 
for the body needs all its powers to fight and overcome 
the crisis which the acute condition brings about. Food 
at such a time only takes away from the energy of the 
body because energy is required in digesting it and turn¬ 
ing it into blood, and at such times no energy can be 
spared for this purpose. 

That is why Nature always takes away the appetite 
of the person who is acutely sick. No animal or 
human being can be induced to eat when they are acutely 
ill. It is as if Nature were to say “I am too busy now 
with the chief work at hand, and I have no time to reach 
out for further supplies or to do anything else but fight 
this thing through with all the forces that are at my com- 


11 


mand. I cannot spare a single corpuscle for the purpose 
of assisting in the digestion of food or for any other sec¬ 
ondary purpose.” 

At such times people are often afraid that the body 
will cease to be nourished and will wither and die as the 
result of missing a meal or two or even a dozen meals or 
more, but there is no ground for such fears. The body 
has enormous reserve supplies of food for the cells and 
can live on itself for many days without a single ounce 
of nourishment taken in from the outside. Diet can there¬ 
fore hardly be considered in acute disease. 

The best thing to do at such a time is to obey the 
dictates of Nature as expressed by the patient. In prac¬ 
tically all cases he will have no desire for food. A raging 
thirst may appear however, and a desire for fresh air, and 
some cooling touch on the skin such as a cold water sponge. 

If the patient is lightly covered, given a deep enema 
to wash out the bowel,'—the skin bathed with cold water,— 
and cold water with a dash of lemon given to the patient 
to drink, then practically everything is being done that 
can be done with any real benefit at this time. The body 
must fight its own fight and win its own victory. It is 
really impossible to help it much. For no one can use 
their own powers to directly enable another to get well. 
That other gets better or worse and lives or dies, only 
according to his own natural reserves of strength and en¬ 
ergy and vitality. No one can add to these reserves though 
it is easy by wrong handling to assist in lowering them. 
Also 1^ inspiring the patient with the hope or the certainty 
of a cure, these reserve forces are more quickly, and more 
thoroughly called upon and the chances of a cure are in¬ 
creased. 

The Use of Medicine in a Crisis 

All medicines and all other unnatural methods, what¬ 
ever they may be, are of absolutely no avail at this moment. 
For every bit of stimulation that medicine may give, a 
reaction is caused that carries the body even further back 
than it has traveled on the strength of this false stimulant. 


12 


This reaction cannot be prevented. Besides, all stimula¬ 
tion is only a more rapid use of the natural reserves and 
when these reserves are used up there is nothing more 
with which to fight. Left to itself, Nature uses these re¬ 
serves as it sees fit, at the right time and in the right 
place. Each corpuscle of the blood is marshalled to do its 
work in the most perfect and efficient manner, and no man 
can improve upon this wonderful organization of Nature 
within the body. 

The further trouble with medicine is that after its 
first effect has worn off, the body must further set 
about the task of getting rid of this medicine. As a rule, 
drugs are flung out of the body by the bowel or by the 
kidneys. A great deal of extra energy is used up in this 
work, and all this energy, it must be remembered, comes 
from the body’s last reserves. That is why the famous 
Dr. Osier, while Professor of Medicine at Oxford Uni¬ 
versity, stated that the “modern doctor has no need for 
medicine whatsoever, but only attempts to assist Nature 
along Nature’s own lines.” 

Acute disease is both the forerunner and the aftermath 
of chronic disease and weakness, and while dieting can 
play but a little part, especially in the more critical periods 
of acute diseases, it can play an increasingly important 
part in dealing with chronic diseases. 


Diet and Chronic Disease 

As long as there is any hunger whatever and any food 
at all is taken into the body, it may as well be the right 
food. It may as well be food that will stimulate elimina¬ 
tion of filth from the bowel and bladder and out of which 
the digestive organs can manufacture perfect blood cells, 
which in turn will go to the part of the body where the 
disease is making its stand. It will proceed to fight the 
disease with increased strength, nourish the depleted cells 
and help to carry off the dead and the dying cells. In 


13 


this way the blood gradually heals any and every lesion 
that occurs in the body, no matter where it may be. 

The blood goes everywhere. It finds its way into every 
cell, into the bones, into the nerves, into the brain, into 
the nose and throat, into the toes, into the finger nails and 
toe nails and into the hair. It nourishes everything. It 
heals everything. It fights cuts and bruises and mends 
them. It knits together broken bones. Wherever it finds 
poisonous material in the body,—it carries it to some point 
where it can be eliminated. It carries this material into 
the lungs from where it is exhaled into the air,—into the 
skin, where it is driven out through the pores and washed 
away in the bath, or by the air that surrounds the body. 
It carries this dirt into the bladder, through the kidneys, 
and into the bowel from where it is excreted out of the 
body. 

A great part of the blood called “lymph” does noth¬ 
ing else except neutralize and remove poisons from the 
tissues. The white corpuscles fight disease, and the red 
corpuscles rebuild the body, feeding wasted cells as well 
as healthy cells and helping to create new tissue when 
required. A polluted blood stream can neither remove nor 
neutralize poisons effectively, nor can it fight disease nor 
rebuild wasted tissue. Ill chosen foods, that are hard to 
assimilate or eliminate, can only help to pollute the blood 
stream. 

Natural and therefore scientific diet can cure 
disease because it is easily digested, and promotes elimina¬ 
tion, instead of retarding it. Natural foods also possess 
the proper elements for the making of good “lymph” to 
neutralize tissue poisons. Such a diet also contains the 
necessary ingredients for the production of healthy white 
corpuscles to fight the invasions of the harmful varieties 
of bacteria and other injurious elements. It also provides 
the mineral and other elements out of which the red cor¬ 
puscles are made, which go to feed and nourish and vitalize 
the entire body and to reconstruct wasted parts. 


14 


It is easy to understand that if there is such a thing 
at all as right diet and wrong diet, then especially in a 
case of sickness where any food at all is eaten, it is better 
to eat the right foods than the wrong. 


CARE OF THE HAIR 

It has been said that her hair is woman's crowning 
glory. 

With modern man, a hat takes the place of his hair. 
In his youth, he gives little thought to his hair, but as he 
leaves his twenties his first fears of baldness set in and 
towards middle age he is often engaged in endless search 
for the ‘‘Golden Fleece” or in fact, any kind of a fleece 
that would sprout from his own head. He tries every 
conceivable drug and preparation and treatment in the vain 
hope of restoring his lost locks. At fifty or sixty and 
often much sooner, he finds his hair thin or largely vanished 
and more than ever, as this condition approaches, does 
he wear his hat tightly pulled down on his forehead and 
never does he realize why he has been so sorely tried and 
punished. If he only knew that the very hat, which for 
a part of the time at least, hides his baldness, is largely 
responsible for that very condition! 

The close fitting hat, tightly pulled down on his head, 
shuts off to a great extent the free circulation of blood 
in the scalp and keeps out the fresh air and the sunshine, 
w'hich otherwise might tend to freshen and invigorate his 
scalp and the hair itself. This snug hat, worn for conven¬ 
tion's sake, is the executioner of the hair, slowly suffocat¬ 
ing and destroying these slender little tubes which Nature 
uses for the purpose of throwing gases out of the body 
and at the same time for covering and warming the scalp 
with a loose, airy thatch. Lastly, the hair is designed by 
nature to set off and adorn the head and to frame it in a 
becoming aura. 


15 



Man nowadays cuts his hair as short as possible, flat¬ 
tens it down on his head with water or various sticky 
preparations, making’ it practically impossible for the air 
to reach it, even when no hat is worn. He then covers 
this varnished surface with an air-tight hat, that shuts in 
the gases from the hair and shuts out the air from his 
scalp; that shuts in oils or pomades or tonic or perfumes 
or other suffocating and poisonous material and the natural 
dirt that emanates from the scalp. 

Primitive Man Was Never Bald 

Primitive man would have looked strange indeed with¬ 
out his hair and there is positive proof that baldness was 
unknown to any of the primitive peoples. Even today, 
wherever we find savage or semi-savage tribes of men, we 
find the hair clinging profusely to their heads all through 
life. We also find amongst the peasants of Europe, who 
go around bare-headed a great deal, especially during the 
summer, that baldness is comparatively rare. 

Even amongst the most civilized of people we find 
amongst men engaged in outdoor work, who frequently 
go about without their hats, only a slight percentage of 
baldness. Best of all is the commonest experience of mod- 
eirn life—the sight of women, aged, wrinkled, sick, but pos¬ 
sessing abundant heads of hair. Rarely do we see a woman 
entirely bald. Even though at times in old age the hair may 
become almost painfully thin, actual baldness is hardly 
known. 

Only the professional hair specialist will come in con¬ 
tact with occasional cases of real baldness in women, even 
of the most ultra-modern type. While amongst the peasant 
women of the world, who go about without hats, with 
their hair exposed to the sun and air, baldness can be 
said to be practically unknown. 

Our own American Indians never knew the meaning 
of baldness, and this can be attributed to the fact that 
they wore their hair long and never wore hats. Though 
on occasion they did wear a loose feather head dress which 


U 


did not however, interfere materially with the circulation 
of the air to and from their scalps. 

Women Rarely Lose Their Hair Completely 

Women, even nowadays, not forgetting the present 
day tendency towards bobbed hair, nevertheless do not wear 
their hair as short as men do. They do not plaster their 
hair down flat on their heads with oils or pomades. In 
fact, they often do their best to curl it and fluff it, to make 
it stand away from the head as much as possible, and 
when they place their hats on their heads, their hat is 
placed loosely. It does not shut off the flow of blood to 
the scalp and does not completely shut off ventilation of 
the air to and from the scalp. It is usually made of a 
porous material which permits the gases from the hair to 
escape through it and also for a slight infiltration of air. 

Women do not buy their hats according to size nor 
see to it that it hugs the head closely. They try instead 
to fit the contour of their face and to match their general 
appearance. While women may wear their shoes tight and 
pinch their feet and thus cause corns and bunions and 
endless foot troubles, they wear loose hats and keep their 
hair in comparatively good condition on this account. 

If they wore no hats at all or only the lightest, gauziest 
headdress and if they frizzled their hair less, stopped the 
use of bleaches and dyes and made slight use of the curling 
iron, they would never under ordinary circumstances lose 
their hair. In such women, only a rare and violent sick¬ 
ness would ever give rise to any hair trouble whatsoever. 

How Men Can Prevent Baldness 

It is easy enough for modern man to keep his hair 
on his head if he would only keep his hat more frequently 
off his head. He must also cease wearing tight hats. The 
use of pomades or oils or any other preparation for hold¬ 
ing down the hair must be discontinued. The hair should 
be washed only once or at most, twice a week. Strong 


17 


soaps must not be used and when through with the use 
of the soap, every last vestige jf it must be washed out 
of the hair. 

The question then arises, how is one to keep the hair 
clean? Herein lies the final instruction not only on how 
to keep the hair clean but on how to keep the hair at all. 

Massage of the Scalp 

To accomplish this, the fingers must be rubbed vigor¬ 
ously and briskly along the scalp and through the hair 
again and again to loosen up all the dandruff and other 
dirt clinging to the scalp. The head must then be turned 
towards the ground and the hands must briskly brush and 
slap the hair in such a manner as to get all the loosened 
hair and the dirt and decayed material completely out of 
the scalp. This process will undoubtedly loosen some of 
the hair daily and hasten their exit, but for each of these 
hair thus forcibly dispossessed. Nature will provide a new 
one and at times two or three new hair. For Nature, as 
has often been said, is very prodigal and has provided un¬ 
derneath the scalp, countless millions of follicles which only 
await a vigorous call from the awakened blood and nerves 
to sprout forth. 

It might then be asked why these hairs cannot be 
made to appear where baldness already exists, and the 
answer is that to some extent they sometimes can be re¬ 
aroused and made to sprout even where actual baldness 
exists, but that this is at best only a far flung hope and 
although it has been done, it is hard to do and the results 
are never really satisfactory. The reason for this is that 
where baldness has set in gradually,—and not as the sudden 
result of a disease,—even the embryonic follicles have 
usually perished through lack of nourishment. It is best 
to prevent the loss of the hair, to catch it before it begins 
to leave or while it is in the process of disappearing, and 
to reawaken and re-eiiliven it while there is still a little 
xeal life? 


18 


It may be said that the only hope for the average 
man or woman who are losing their hair or who have 
already lost their hair, whether suddenly or gradually, lies 
in self-massage with the finger tips as has been indicated, 
and in wearing the hair, if possible, a bit longer, at least 
in the front part of the head,—to wear looser hats, softer 
hats and in fact to wear the hat as little as possible, carry¬ 
ing it in the hand, especially on a summer’s day in pref¬ 
erence to carrying it on the head. It may be said as an 
axiom that the less a man wears his hat, the longer will 
he wear his hair and the more fresh air he gives his head, 
the more hair he will have to wear. 

Insofar as tonics for the scalp are concerned and 
electrical and other methods for the growing and the pres¬ 
ervation of the hair, they are all valueless. The only way 
to cure the effect of any cause is, first to remove the cause. 
For even if the effect is removed and the cause remains, 
the effect will be reproduced and the victim will be harrassed 
all over again. It is best in the first place, to get at the 
root of the trouble. 

It is well to remember that the savage had no preroga¬ 
tive with regard to the hair that is not possessed by modern 
man. Nor does woman possess in her scalp, a power that 
man does not possess equally. The air is free to nourish 
the scalp and to remove the gases from the hair. For it 
must be remembered that each individual hair is a tiny 
fibril, emitting gases from the body. The man who wishes 
to gas himself, need only place a hat over his nose and 
mouth and shut all air from his lungs and shut in all the 
noxious gases. Just as readily as his lungs will suffocate 
under these conditions, so will his scalp and hair suffocate 
under like conditions. 

A man can choose between his hair and his hat. Nature 
has given him his hair as a covering and if he then pro¬ 
ceeds to cover that covering with a hat. Nature will remove 
the original covering and permit him to keep his hat. 


19 


CARE OF THE EYES 

The wearing of glasses for varied eye troubles has 
become so general that it has become an accepted fact 
that the only way to handle weaknesses of the eye is by 
artificial lenses. 

A vast industry has been founded upon this assump¬ 
tion. Tens of thousands of people are engaged in the 
manufacture and sale of this apparatus. Frequently, the 
very people who prescribe and sell them are seen to wear 
glasses themselves. 

It is therefore assumed by many that if there were a 
better method of caring for the eyes, these professionals 
would surely know of it and would not themselves be forced 
to use these artificial supports. 

As a matter of fact, however, the entire theory upon 
which the use of glasses is based is totally wrong. This 
theory in brief, holds that if a certain weakness or deformity 
of the eye exists, some support for this weakness must 
be devised. The result of catering to eye deficiencies in 
this manner is that the defect is maintained without any 
hope of cure. There is really no attempt to cure on the 
part of the optometrist. He simply seeks to fit a crutch 
to the eye, and if the sight grows even worse with the 
use of this crutch, a stronger crutch is devised. No at¬ 
tempt whatever is made to search for the causes of the 
trouble. The whole idea consists of treating the effect 
as it is found at the time that the eye is examined. 

The wearing of glasses not only fails to cure any given 
eye ailment, but directly tends to permanently fix such an 
ailment. In other words, any attempt on the part of the 
eyes to cure themselves is forestalled and prevented and 
the weakness is made to continue stationary or to grow 
worse. 

As a common-sense test that will tend to make this 
fact clear, let anyone with perfect eyesight be made to 
wear a pair of glasses devised for a near sighted person. 
It may be assumed as a certainty that before long, the 


20 


wearing of these glasses will have shortened the vision 
considerably. The same would hold true with glasses 
advised for astigmatism or far-sightedness. Glasses which 
are supposed to aid these conditions would tend to produce 
these weaknesses in a person whose eyesight was normal. 
It can therefore be readily understood that glasses can 
in no way be curative. They are supports which in no 
way tend to bring back normal vision but make abnormal 
vision permanent. 

If space permitted, all the causes for the various forms 
of eye trouble might be gone into in detail. As it is, it 
must suffice to say that practically all forms of eye trouble 
are caused by eye-strain of one sort or another. A person 
whose work requires the constant use of the eyes or who 
reads a great deal, will eventually find that the eyes have 
been severely strained. An eye specialist will be consulted 
and almost invariably, glasses are advised. Sometimes a 
hocus-pocus of medical treatment is gone through first 
and when such treatment fails as it nearly always does, 
then glasses are prescribed as apparently a last resort. 

It may be stated right here that the use of glasses is 
necessary only in cases of true abnormality of the eyes. 
Such abnormalities are so rare however, that they need 
not concern the average man or woman at all. 

If the eyes are sufficiently strengthened by certain 
forms of eye exercise and massage, eye-glasses can easily 
be done away with and the eyes be made to function per¬ 
fectly. Even in some very extreme cases, all need for the 
wearing of glasses should be eliminated in from three to 
six months. 

The following eye exercises if practised conscientiously 
for from five to fifteen minutes each day at a convenient 
time, wdll prove very beneficial in all cases of eye trouble. 
The ultimate effect and the swiftness of the cure depend 
largely upon the will of the individual. If they are per¬ 
formed half-heartedly with little faith in their efficacy, the 
results will not be all that could be desired. 


21 


In doing these exercises, it should be remembered that 
the eye is an organ moved by a number of tiny muscles. 
That when these muscles are constricted and strained by 
focusing the eye in a single direction for hours at a time 
as is the case in reading or sewing or bookkeeping, etc., 
these muscles are weakened and the blood vessels all 
around the eyes are injured, with the result that the optic 
nerve is likewise affected. 

The following eye exercises are intended to relax these 
muscles by distributing the strain in every direction. When¬ 
ever they have been tested, they have been found to work 
unfailingly. 

EXERCISES FOR THE EYES 

FIRST EXERCISE: Sit in a chair with the back 
towards the light and move the eyes slowly so as to de¬ 
scribe a complete circle. (The head must be held perfectly 
still during all of the eye exercises—the eyes alone must 
move.) Do this about five or ten times in each direction. 
This should be done at about an average speed of 25 to 30 
movements a minute and should be continued for one or 
two minutes at a time. 

SECOND EXERCISE: Turn the eyes to the left 
upper corner of the room. Bring them down to the right 
lower corner of the room. Bring them up to the right 
upper corner of the room and a,cross to the left lower corner. 
Continue this exercise for one or two minutes. 

THIRD EXERCISE: Turn the eyes up and as far 
back as possible. Turn the eyes to the right side and try 
to look in back of you. Look down, (do not bend the 
head), and try to see your chest. Turn the eyes to the 
left and as far back of you as possible. Do this for about 
one minute. 

FOURTH EXERCISE: Look as far to one side as 
you can. Then suddenly swing the eyes around and repeat 
in other direction. Continue this exercise for one or two 
minutes. 


22 


FIFTH EXERCISE: Turn the eyes as far up as 
possible. Swing them over to the upper left side and sud¬ 
denly swing them back to the upper right side, gazing 
upward all the time. This exercise can then be done while 
looking down. The best results however, are gotten while 
looking up. 

SIXTH EXERCISE; Turn the eyes to the upper 
left side. Move them down to the lower left side and back 
again to the former position. Repeat this about ten or 
twelve times. Repeat this exercise on the right side. 

Another very excellent exercise to do when out in 
the open air, is to look as far into the distance as possible 
and then back towards the ground directly in front of you. 
This can be varied by looking off in one direction far in 
front of you, then down to the ground at your feet, then 
far off in another direction and back again. The best of all 
tonics for the eyes is looking out on green spaces while 
out in the open air. Let the eyes roam in every direction. 
See and notice everything, both in the sky and on the 
ground. The green fields, the trees, the moving clouds, 
the rocks, the earth, flying insects and birds should all 
attract the eye. A long walk through the fields or woods 
or even through a city park with the eyes roving every¬ 
where and resting alternately, will tend to bring back the 
organ of sight to the sharpness and clearness of the eyes 
of our ancestors. 

Perfect eyesight is the gift of nature to all human 
beings. Natural eye-exercises tend to bring back the full 
use of nature’s gift. 



23 


EAR TROUBLE 

Practically all forms of ear trouble are due to catarrh 
of the nose and throat. The eustachian tube or middle ear, 
which is the real organ of hearing, is easily inflamed by 
any disorder that affects these organs. One end of this 
tube almost runs into the passage through which air is 
drawn from the nose into the throat. When the air pass¬ 
ages are inflamed by catarrh, head noises, pains and aches, 
clogging of the ears, an excessive amount of wax in the 
ears and difficulty of hearing are all produced through the 
sympathetic inflammation of this little tube. 

Absolutely no benefit and a great deal of harm may 
result from treating the ears locally. Catarrh, though it 
frequently seems to affect only the nose and throat is 
nevertheless a general condition of the body brought on 
by wrong diet and insufficient fresh air and exercise. The 
only cure for catarrh and for the troubles that it causes in 
the ear, in the nose and throat or in the sinuses above the 
nose, is a thorough application of the principles of correct 
living. 

It may seem rather peculiar to advise a person who 
cannot hear well or who may be totally deaf, to eat the 
right foods, to exercise and breathe fresh air, in order that 
his seemingly local condition may be cured. Nevertheless 
the organ of hearing is a part of the body, nourished by 
the blood like all others. A blood stream which is filled 
with mucous material will succeed in irritating the nose 
and throat directly and in a certain percentage of cases, 
will both directly and indirectly attack the ear. The cure 
lies in a pure blood stream, which can only be had through 
proper diet, especially a diet of fruits and the light green 
vegetables, as these contain little or no mucous material. 
They cannot irritate the mucous lining of the nose and 
throat or the middle ear. Their effect is a constantly 
cleansing one. They cure both the catarrh and the effects 
of catarrh. Exercise, long walks, and the fresh air treat¬ 
ment should also not be forgotten. 


24 


COLDS,—THEIR CAUSE, PREVENTION 
AND CURE 
How Colds Originate 

(A Detailed and Slightly Technical Explanation) 

When one is in the throes of a violent cold it is hard 
to understand that it is only a curative effort on the part 
of the body. The sneezing, the coughing, the swimming 



An ideal representation of the Respiratory Organs. 

S. The larynx. The trachea. 5, 6. The bronchia. 

9, 9, 9, 9, Air-cells. U /. 1, 2, 2, 2. Outlines of the lungs. 

eyes, the aching head and the general discomforts that 
accompany a cold may seem like a visitation from the 

25 









nether regions but it is really a blessing in disguise, for 
during the progress of the cold the nose and throat are 
being used as channels for extraordinary elimination of 
waste materials which have been clogging the body. It 
must be remembered that every living moment the body 
is throwing out carbonic acid gas from the nose and throat. 
These poisons are taken from the blood which enters the 
lungs. The oxygen taken in from the air is used in burn¬ 
ing them. They are turned into carbonic acid gas and 
exhaled through the nose and throat. 

When the blood stream is oversupplied with these 
poisons, irritation both of the lungs and of the nose and 
throat results. As a rule, the lungs are not seriously affected 
by this irritation especially in the beginning, but the nose 
and throat and the bronchial tubes are more quickly affected. 
Inflammation of the nose, throat and breathing tubes begins, 
the breath becomes hot and the nose and throat at first be¬ 
come dry but soon the blood rallies itself and pours moisture 
into the air passages in order to counteract this dryness 
and heated condition. As this moisture increases in volume, 
the outward signs of the cold begin to make their appear¬ 
ance. The nose and throat begin to run with moisture. 

Poisons which have accumulated on the mucous lining 
of the air passages are washed down. As these rivulets 
of poison come in contact with the delicate nerve ends in 
the nose or throat a more or less violent sneezing or cough¬ 
ing is produced. Little by little, if the accumulation of 
poisons in the blood was very great the cold becomes more 
and more violent for just as soon as the nose and throat 
become extremely active in washing away (through sneez¬ 
ing and coughing) the poisons which have accumulated 
there, the blood flings still more poison into the nose and 
throat, at the same time pouring more water into these 
organs so that an almost continuous washing and evacuat¬ 
ing process is brought about. 

Meanwhile the roof of the mouth becomes hot and in¬ 
flamed, the palate becomes sore and it is made more or 
less difficult to eat or swallow or enjoy food. The appetite 


26 


also diminishes, food loses its savor because the sense of 
smell practically disappears while the cold lasts and the 
sense of taste goes with it. A great thirst is also usually 
set up and the patient wishes to drink water almost end¬ 
lessly. 

All of these symptoms are only the body’s varied efforts 
to get rid of poisons. They indicate that the body is try¬ 
ing to cure itself. A cold is not a calamity. It is a revolt 
against a slowly creeping death. 

It is a sign that the body is still alive, and full of 
fight. 

For this reason colds are frequent in childhood and 
youth. They are less common in middle life,—and rare 
in old age. 


How to Get Rid of a Cold 

During the process of a violent cold. Nature tries 
to tell the patient as plainly as possible, “Do not eat!” 
“Any food taken at this time will again fill up the blood 
stream with poisonous waste material, and thus prevent 
a cure, but drink lots of water so that the waste already 
in your body will be quickly washed out.” If the patient 
will obey this advice and drink copious quantities of water 
mixed with a little lemon juice (with or without the ad¬ 
dition of honey, but no other sweetening of any kind,) he 
may be sure that the cold will really be washed out of 
his body within a few days at the most. When the 
cold is removed in this manner, it is really out of his body, 
while the use of medicines or any other methods will only 
tend to suppress the cold, to drive the poisons back into 
his system where they will lodge and accumulate until 
some time in the future the body will make another effort 
to fling them out either by means of a cold or boils or a 
rash or through some other even more serious method. 

In the ordinary cold a certain difficulty is manifested 
in breathing. If the patient is intelligent he will react 
naturally to this difficulty and go out in the open air and 
breathe as deeply as possible for many minutes at a time. 


27 


This deep breathing with its consequent assimilation of 
oxygen will help to burn up the poisons in his blood and 
thus get rid of them all the more quickly. A long walk 
in a park or in the open country is also tremendously 
beneficial in purifying the system and relieving it of its 
mucous encumbrance. 

While walking, the blood is stimulated and made 
to course rapidly through the body. The poisons 
produced or held in the tissues are all the more quickly 
flung into the blood stream and the blood then throws 
these poisons into the lungs, the bowel, the bladder and 
the skin. This eliminative process is hastened and con¬ 
tinued all the more as the walk is made longer until after 
a six or an eight mile walk, the nose and throat will as 
a rule be found to be in far better condition than when 
the walk was begun. If this walk is repeated day after 
day for several days, it will materially hasten the cure 
of the condition which brought about the cold. The internal 
bath or enema, applied twice daily during the cold will 
also help greatly to cure it by getting rid of the waste 
material in the bowels and thus stimulate the normal 
elimination of waste matter from the blood into the bowels. 
In this way the blood is purified. There is no further need 
of flinging an excessive amount of poisons into the lungs. 
The nose and throat are no longer overworked and the 
cold diminishes and disappears. 

Colds Come From Within 

It can be readily seen from what has been said here 
regarding colds that they are brought about from within 
and not from without, that they are the product of ac¬ 
cumulations of waste material in the 'system. It may be 
asked how these accumulations are brought about, and the 
answer is that constipation which clogs the bowel and 
prevents the proper functioning of this great organ, is the 
primary and basic cause of this poisonous condition of 
the blood. When the bowel does not function at least 
once and preferably two or three times each day, a con- 


28 


dition of constipation may be said to be present. While 
this condition exists, waste materials that should leave the 
body are reabsorbed into the blood and are made to cir¬ 
culate through the body. These poisons must be gotten 
rid of in one manner or another. The lungs are frequently 
called upon to do this work and as has already been shown 
they are overworked eventually and the first result as a 
rule is what we call a cold. 

The old-time physicians seemed to recognize the true 
nature of a cold and prescribed laxatives and purgatives 
for its cure. Of course these remedies only helped tem¬ 
porarily. For as soon as the bowel was free of the ac¬ 
cumulated waste material and the condition of the nose 
and throat began to improve a little, the patient would 
generally set about the business of eating as hearty a meal 
as possible. He would also seem to take great pains to 
eat those very foods which were most constipating and 
which were filled with the most poisonous types of waste 
materials, such as uric acid, phosphoric acid, guanine, de- 
calcomaine and other noxious elements which would im¬ 
mediately begin the reproduction or the continuation of 
the cold. 

The only way that colds can be avoided is to avoid 
the constipating and clogging foods, particularly white 
bread and other white flour products, pearled barley, white 
rice, denatured cereals and meats, fish, chicken and eggs. 
Also beans, peas, lentils and cheese. If none of the forego¬ 
ing foods are eaten there can never be a cold. If little of 
them is eaten, then colds will be rare. If a great deal of 
these foods, especially the former are eaten, then colds 
are bound to be frequent and the aftermath of these colds, 
especially when they are treated with drugs and serums, 
is bound to be more and more injurious and severe with 
the passing of the years. 

Are ^^Colds^’ Produced by Cold or Wet Weather? 

It may perhaps be asked why it is that colds are more 
frequent in wet or cold weather and less frequent in fair 


29 


or dry weather, and also why it is that drafts and sudden 
exposure while the body is in a perspiring or heated condi¬ 
tion, are supposed to bring on colds? The explanation of 
these phenomena differs in various instances. Wet and 
cold weather forces the body to react powerfully against 
outer conditions. The body must keep up its heat in order 
to resist the outward cold and to throw off the moisture 
which tends to accumulate on it. 

As a dog shakes his pelt to get rid of moisture, so 
does the human body react in cold, wet, weather. The 
blood circulates rapidly, and every nerve tingles with the 
effort to get warm and dry. 

Even in dry, cold, weather, the body fights hard to 
keep warm. If there happens to be a lot of waste material 
in the body, the rapidly circulating blood may begin to 
throw it out through the nose and throat. 

In this way cold or wet weather may bring on the 
body-cleansing process which we call a “cold.” 

Going Out Into The Cold, While in a State of 
Perspiration 

In the case of the individual who is perspiring or 
heated up with the warmth of the air or from exercise 
such as dancing and so forth in a room where the windows 
are tightly closed or where the ventilation is very poor, 
the sudden contact of the open air may tend to quickly 
cool the perspiration and thus stop the exit of poisons 
from the skin. This sudden stoppage of the excretion of 
poisons from one channel will sometimes tend to fling 
these poisons into another channel such as the lungs and 
the continued contact of cold air with the body may cause 
a powerful reaction in which these poisons will be gathered 
up and flung into the nose and throat from which they are 
eliminated. 

If the individual who is thus suddenly struck 
by this influx of poisons from the skin into the nose and 
throat will continue to walk in the open air and breathe 
deeply in the meantime, these poisons may be so thoroughly 


30 


eliminated and the nose and throat so much healed and 
cleansed by the oxygen which is inhaled during this walk 
that no violent cold will be the result. However, if the body 
is in very poor shape especially when the patient has had in¬ 
sufficient sleep and rest and where the mental state is not 
very good, a cold may result even despite the long walk 
and the breathing of great quantities of fresh air. In this 
case the body will be taking advantage of the temporary 
stimulation of exercise or the dance or of the hot room 
and the subsequent contact with the cold air for the purpose 
of utilizing the nose and throat as channels for eliminating 
long accumulated waste materials which would otherwise 
have remained in the body until some other stimulation 
came along to help start this process of elimination. For 
it must be remembered that in a much weakened body even 
the power to produce a violent cold is lacking and it takes 
some great outward stimulation to energize the body into 
making this effort towards eliminating accumulated w^aste 
materials. 


Do Drafts Produce Colds? 

A draft is never considered such in warm weather. It 
is only in cold weather that circulating air in a room is 
labeled a ‘‘draft,” and as such it is made an object of 
dread. A person sitting near a window that may be slightly 
open from which cold air enters and circulates through 
the room, may get up to find some part of his body stiff 
and aching or unduly cold. If this condition is later fol¬ 
lowed by a running nose or sneezing or coughing, the suf¬ 
ferer will recollect that he had been in a draft and that 
thus he had caught a cold. In this case as well as in the 
last, the draft has only served to stir up the blood and the 
suddenly stirred blood immediately began the work of 
elimination which developed into the more or less violent 
elimination which we call a cold. 

On the other hand, the draft may have actually brought 
about a cool condition of the skin or of some muscle from 
which the blood had been driven by the cold. This could 


31 


only happen where the general circulation is very 
poor and when it does happen, either a *‘locar' 
cold so-called is produced in which case the affected 
part may remain stiff and continue to ache for some 
time or else the entire blood stream will get 
busy with the work of heating this part of the body 
and bringing it back to normal. While doing this, the 
poisons which accumulated locally during the time that 
the blood failed to reach the affected part, are brought 
into general circulation. These poisons may consist chiefly 
of dead blood corpuscles and cells which were destroyed 
in the fight against the invasion of the cold. 

This added work in the already weakened body brings 
about a state of further weakness or exhaustion, in which 
case the lungs are again unduly called upon to take up the 
burden of elimination. In such a case, as has already been 
shown, a cold is readily produced and in fact, the grippe, 
influenza or pneumonia may be the result. For these latter 
conditions are only names for inflammation of the lungs or 
bronchial tubes and of a general feverish effort on the 
part of the body to eliminate poisons through these organs. 

It may be argued that people should not sit or stand 
in drafts nor permit themselves to leave a warm room 
and enter the outer cold while in a state of perspiration. 
Undoubtedly, such advice may seem at least temporarily 
valuable for those who are afraid of that eliminative effort 
of the body which is known as a cold. However, people 
who will take every precaution to wrap themselves up 
carefully when leaving a warm room and who will never 
remain in a cold draft nor permit a cold draft anywhere 
near where they find themselves will nevertheless be 
afflicted by severe colds, catarrh, influenza, bronchitis, 
grippe, pneumonia and so forth. So long as poisons ac¬ 
cumulate in the blood and tissues through wrong living, 
and while the body continues to possess the power to 
rally itself in the effort to rid itself of these poisons, the 
ailments above mentioned are bound to make their appear¬ 
ance. 


32 


If the normal channels of elimination are not kept 
active in a normal way, then nature will force them to be 
active in an abnormal way. The normal elimination 
of gases from the lungs, nose and throat does no harm 
whatever and is not in any way uncomfortable. If waste 
matter is permitted to clog the system, however, the 
body must make strenuous efforts to get rid of it, 
and these efforts will manifest themselves in the 
form of ailments of the nose, throat, bronchial tubes and 
lungs or of other organs or parts of the body. 

It is up to the individual to choose. 

By keeping the body fit at all times, colds are made 
impossible for there is absolutely no need for the nose 
and throat to become abnormally active as in the case of 
a cold unless the body has been subnormally active in the 
ordinary elimination of waste material. Therefore, people 
who keep their bowels functioning at least once a day; 
who keep their lungs working properly by exercise and 
by breathing sufficient fresh air; who keep their skins 
active by proper bathing and at the same time get plenty 
of sleep and rest and drink sufficient water, etc., in other 
words, people who keep every organ of their bodies work¬ 
ing as nature intended them to work, neither too much 
nor too little, never in any way are forced to suffer from 
these ailments which afflict the overwhelming majority of 
mankind. 

The savage who had to be in the open air a great 
deal of the time both summer and winter and who lived 
in extremely drafty places, did not know the meaning of 
a cold or of any of the other ailments which afflict mankind. 
He exercised plentifully in the open air, ate simply, slept 
sufficiently and on the whole worried very little. His 
bowels, skin and lungs were far more active than is the 
case with the average individual nowadays and so he never 
knew what it meant to clog up one part and thus overwork 
another part of the body. 

There are thousands of people nowadays who observe 
the natural laws and who may be said to be entirely free 


33 


not only of colds but of all other ailments which are pre¬ 
valent nowadays. The privilege of possessing such good 
health is open to all who will forget the old time interpre¬ 
tations of drafts, wet weather, etc. and who will put their 
bodies in such condition through right living as to make 
these ailments impossible. 

Asthma, Catarrh, Bronchitis, Hayfever 

Asthma, catarrh and bronchitis are chronic forms of 
the ordinary cold. Hay fever is a violent seasonal form 
of catarrh. It is not caused by inhaling pollen. Farmers 
who are always in the midst of pollen, rarely have hay 
fever. 

An absolute essential in the cure of these ailments is 
a diet consisting of non-mucous foods. Raw, fresh fruits 
and berries contain no mucous whatever. Raw green veg¬ 
etables contain very little of a mucous nature. A diet con¬ 
sisting largely of these foods will soon clear up the most 
stubborn nose and throat conditions. Stop adding to the 
mucous accumulations and all irritations of the mucous 
membrane disappear. 

In severe types of these ailments, try to follow the fruit 
diet as outlined in these pages. Such a diet, combined with 
fresh air, exercise, and other forms of correct living, should 
bring relief in a few days. After a week or two, however, 
whether relief has been obtained or not, begin to follow 
the regular summer or winter menus, according to the sea¬ 
son of the year. 

If this diet is continued and right living is persisted 
in, a cure will be achieved in time. Patience is one of the 
greatest essentials in the treatment of these stubborn ail¬ 
ments. The final result is, however, never in doubt, when 
natural treatment is resorted to. 


34 


TONSILS AND ADENOIDS 

These are lymphoid structures at the base of the nose 
where it enters the mouth and also in the throat at the 
root of the tongue. When they become swollen and filled 
with pus, they interfere with breathing and cause aches 
and pains and in general bring about a very uncomfortable 
condition. When this occurs, the average physician will 
usually advise a surgical operation, claiming that it is at 
once harmless and necessary. It is never entirely harm¬ 
less and sometimes causes serious complications. Above 
all, it is never essential. 

It is claimed by those who believe in a surgical opera¬ 
tion, that the tonsils and adenoids have absolutely no func¬ 
tion to perform in the body of a human being. They call 
them vestigial organs which modern man has inherited 
from a lower stage of life and which are no longer useful, 
though originally they may have been necessary. This is 
a very comfortable theory for the surgeon who wants to 
salve his conscience and thus prepare himself to cut out 
these very useful organs. 

Many other physicians and surgeons nowadays claim' 
that they do not know what these organs are for, nor how 
they happen to be present in the mouths and throats of 
human beings. Therefore, they would cut these organs 
out, because, first of all, they do not know what they are 
for, and secondly, the organs are diseased. If the knife 
was to be used so readily in all other diseases and sicknesses, 
the body of the average human being would resemble a cross 
puzzle of scars and patches long before the age of maturity. 
The believer in tonsilectomy and adenoidectomy however, 
will reply that in this case, we do not know the purpose 
of these organs, therefore they must be useless and so it 
does no harm to remove them. 

Only a few short years ago, the purpose for the exist¬ 
ence of many of the glands of the body, especially the 


35 


ductless glands, was not known. Today even the most 
orthodox physician knows that they are of the utmost 
importance to health, growth, and life itself. Likewise, 
there are a few modern physicians who already realize the 
necessity for the existence of the tonsils and adenoids and 
who understand the reason for their existence. These 
physicians point out that the tonsils and adenoids are made 
of lymphatic tissue and that wherever lymph is found in 
the body it invariably acts as a neutralizer of poisons in 
the blood. For this reason they argue that these lymphatic 
organs are specially placed by nature in the nose and throat, 
where some of the greatest activity of the blood takes place 
and where a great deal of poison must therefore be pro¬ 
duced. It is also believed that they help the mucous lining 
of the nose and throat to filter the poisons that come in 
directly from the air. 

At any rate, nature has placed them both in animals 
and in men and if they have any function at all in animals 
and it is admitted that they have, then undoubtedly they 
perform a somewhat similar function in human beings, 
especially in children. At maturity, these organs tend to 
shrivel up and practically to disappear, because evidently 
their usefulness has declined or ceased. Nevertheless, 
whenever they are found enlarged or suppurated in a grown 
person, it must be because they have constantly been called 
upon to either renew their functions or to continue whatever 
function they possess. It is not reasonable to suppose that 
they are there sheerly through accident. There are no ac¬ 
cidents in nature. Everything follows a law and every effect 
has a cause. 

In order that we may know how to treat a diseased 
condition of these organs, it is only necessary to find out 
why they are in this condition. Invariably, it will be found 
that the person suffering from tonsilitis or inflamed 
adenoids, whether it is a child or a grown-up, is in general 
in a run down condition. It will always be found that 
they eat too much denatured white flour products or de¬ 
natured grains of another sort and refined cereals. These 


36 


bleached and pasty starches will as a rule be found to 
form the bulk of the diet of one suffering from tonsil and 
adenoid trouble. An excessive diet of eggs, chicken, fish 
and meat also helps to bring on these ailments. 

Aside from diet, in every case where these troubles 
exist, it will be found that the individual does not breathe 
sufficient fresh air, does not exercise enough or perhaps 
not at all, and likewise walks very little in the open air. 


TONSILS AND ADENOIDS IN INFANTS AND 
OLDER CHILDREN 

The cure for tonsils and adenoids in children is very 
easy as the parents can dictate to the children what they 
must eat and do in order to be cured. A diet consisting 
of raw oranges, apples, pears, grapes and fresh berries 
should be prescribed to the exclusion of all other foods 
and all beverages except water. The child should be kept 
in the open air as much as possible, and when indoors 
even in the coldest weather, the windows of its room should 
remain open, at least a little during the day and as much 
as possible at night. There need be no fear of the child 
suffering any harm through fresh air, no matter how frigid 
it may be as long as it is well covered. By well covered, 
we do not mean that it should be suffocated in great, heavy 
layers of clothing. Its face must be open to the air no 
matter how cold, and the clothing must be loose around 
its body. 

If the child can walk, it should be taken for long walks 
and should be made to play around in the open air as much 
as possible. In winter it must not be too heavily dressed. 
In feeding the child, the fruit should not be stuffed down 
its throat. It should be given fruit only as it desires and 
can be all of one kind if the child wants it so. If the 
child refuses fruit and begs for other foods, the parents 
must harden themselves against its pleas and wait until 


37 



the child is hungry enough to eat raw fruit. Until then 
it should get nothing whatever to eat. 

An entire day may pass before the child asks for any 
food, but even if two or three days pass, no harm would 
be done, as in all cases of sickness the body can get along 
better without any food at all, than with even the best 
foods, as the process of digestion is always very slow in 
all sickness. It should take but a few days at most to obtain 
real relief. 

Following a fruit diet, ordinary milk can be added 
in gradually increased quantities as the child desires, and 
later on other natural foods such as light vegetables, whole 
wheat bread, nuts, whole grain cereals, etc. can be added. 

In the case of an infant who is still largely on a milk 
diet, it may not be wise to deprive the child of milk, but 
unsweetened orange juice should be given the child after 
each nursing or in between nursings. The amount of milk 
fed the child, whether it is breast fed or bottle fed should 
be decreased a little during the curative period. If the 
child has little appetite, which is usually the case in a con¬ 
dition of this kind, the amount of milk which it is fed can 
be reduced considerably. It can even be done away with 
altogether for a day or two, when the child does not suckle 
at its mother’s breast. 

In the case of a nursing mother whose child suffers 
from these ailments, she should not fail to dose herself 
as well as the child, with the fruit juices. She must like¬ 
wise live more naturally in other respects if she wants her 
child to benefit by the milk it draws from her body. 

In grown-ups, a fruit diet followed by the addition of 
light vegetables and of all other natural foods, combined 
with exercise, long walks and deep breathing, will soon 
accomplish a cure for this condition. Deep breathing in 
itself will greatly assist even without the aid of diet and 
exercise in relieving this condition. For a complete cure 
however, all forms of natural living are essential. 


38 


THE TEETH AND GUMS 

Wild animals and savages invariably have good teeth 
which remain almost perfect until old age and death over¬ 
take them. 

A lion could hardly get along with a mouthful of 
bridge work, nor could a horse or a cow, who in their 
natural state must seize grass and tear it out of the ground 
and then slowly chew it and grind it into a state where it 
is ready for swallowing. 

A savage who is unaware of the marvels of modern 
cookery, could hardly get along without a good, sound set 
of teeth. Dentists are not found in the wilderness, and 
a man in the midst of wild nature could hardly get along 
with a mouthful of weak and decaying teeth and bleeding, 
pus filled gums. So wherever we look amongst natural 
creatures, we find the teeth, perfectly formed and adapted 
for their work all through life. We find, in fact, that the 
teeth remain comparatively strong and well set even after 
the rest of the body has greatly deteriorated. 

For an animal or an aboriginal man, the loss of the 
teeth would spell death. There is only one reason why 
their teeth are so strong and sound, and this is because 
they are forced to live on coarse, natural foods, with little 
or no preparation. And likewise, the only reason for the 
poor gums and decayed teeth of modern man is the soft 
and mushy and denatured diet upon which he tries to live. 

With the aid of the dentist, he manages to continue 
to eat and even to chew his food a little when most of 
his teeth have decayed and his gums are soft and tender. 
But no amount of dental skill can ever be made to equal 
the simple efficiency of a mouth filled with strong, clean, 
natural teeth. Nature provides all its creatures with the 
tools and implements which they require in order to live 
and these tools and implements are kept in good condition 
only so long as they are used for their natural purpose. 


39 


A tiger needs his teeth and claws to tear down his 
prey, to rend its flesh and hide and to grind its bones so 
that the marrow might be gotten out of them. Even ^ 
sheep needs its teeth that it may crop the grass, but man 
does not need his teeth any more, for he can cook his food 
into a semi-liquid and swallow it with little chewing. Of 
course this injures his stomach and takes away from his 
teeth their normal exercise and work, but this matters 
little so long as the soft, mushy and watery food can con¬ 
tinue to be eaten without teeth. 


THE CAUSE AND CURE OF PYORRHEA 

It is a law of Nature that only that which is useful 
is maintained and the useless dies and is destroyed. What 
use is there for teeth that bite into coffee and cake, soups 
and gravies, soft pies and soft melting meats and finely 
chopped vegetables and cereals, that are soaked in milk, 
puddings and ice creams, that slide so easily down the 
throat, candies and creams, that liquify in the mouth and 
that cause the teeth to liquify as well? Nature realizes 
the folly of providing an efficient cutting and grinding 
machine where there is no cutting or grinding to do, and 
gradually and slowly proceeds to remove the teeth little 
by little and one by one. The gums are softened so that 
the teeth will come out easily; pains and aches harrass 
the owner of the teeth until he is forced to help Nature 
along by extracting the teeth before they are completely 
eaten away. Ulcers and pus pockets are caused at the 
roots of the teeth so that their foundations are sapped 
and they almost slide out of the mouth with just a little 
pull of the forceps or even of the naked hand. Nature is 
very prodigal but not to the extent of keeping up and 
caring for wondrous machinery where there is no use to 
which the machinery can be put. Modern man is tooth¬ 
less because he has no further use for his teeth. He should 
have no complaints to offer and accept the inevitable. 


40 




But suppose he does not care to look upon this as 
inevitable? Suppose he does not like the appearance of 
an empty, gaping mouth or of the beautifully fitted plates 
of the dentists? Suppose he insists that there must be a 
way of keeping the teeth as the house dog or the cat 
keep their teeth, by gnawing on a bone, even though they 
eat out of the garbage can? Suppose he wishes to imitate 
the savage or in fact, those few civilized people who con¬ 
sciously or unconsciously adhere more or less to the natural 
laws of diet, eating fruits and breaking nuts with their 
teeth, chewing raw, green vegetables and eating bread with¬ 
out butter, coarse, black bread that requires a lot of chew¬ 
ing before it can be swallowed easily! 

If a person should choose to live on a natural diet and 
to exercise the teeth and gums,—artificially if necessary, 
there is no question in the world but that he can maintain 
a perfect set of teeth, provided that he has such a set—in 
other words, if he has begun in time,—or failing of a per¬ 
fect set of teeth, to strengthen the gums and keep the teeth 
at least as good as he finds them at the moment, with 
practically no further pain, deterioration or decay so long 
as life lasts. There are modern methods that perfectly 
fit modern life, which enables any man, woman or child 
to do this. All it requires is first a little faith, and secondly 
a few weeks trial. These methods never fail, for they are 
based on the natural laws and the original habits of man,— 
those laws and habits under which man developed and 
in which the really beautiful bodies of natural men and 
women assumed their form. 

With all the refinement in the features of civilized 
humans, there should also be that last refinement and that 
most perfect adornment, a perfect set of beautiful, even, 
glistening white teeth. This last refinement is the refine¬ 
ment of Nature and is her free gift to all who obey her 
laws. 

A Perfected Exerciser for the Teeth 

In biting on a handkerchief for the purpose of strength¬ 
ening the teeth and gums, wonderful results are obtained. 


41 


The author has however, found it necessary for his 
own purpose to invent a special, plate-like device, made 
of soft but tough rubber, which is almost indestructible. 
This article can always be kept clean. It fits the mouth 
perfectly and can always be kept handy. The posses¬ 
sion of such a device in itself is an inspiration to do this 
exercise. Nothing in the world will strengthen the teeth 
and gums such as biting and pressing on this rubber article 
for about a half minute in the morning and another half 
minute at night. 

It may be said positively and absolutely, that the worst 
phases of pyorrhea will be done away with in two or three 
months’ time at most by the proper exercise of the teeth 
and gums, and by an improved diet. 

Shaky teeth and weak gums or exposed teeth that 
project too far from the gums or a condition of empyemia 
or pus in the mouth, begin to improve almost from the 
first day that this tooth exerciser is used. It is also a great 
aid to cleanliness of the teeth and mouth, as the salivary 
glands are greatly toned up by its use and they are nature’s 
own provision for the cleansing of the mouth and teeth. 

A tiger in the zoo will be given a bone to bite on and 
this bone is the only reason for the wonderful gum and 
tooth condition of meat-eating animals, even when confined 
in a cage. 

Deprived of tough resisting foods, man’s teeth groAV 
shaky, the gums bleed and the teeth decay. 


The inventor has tested this article for nearly fifteen 
years with unfailing success. He now offers this tooth 
exerciser to the public with the assurance of perfect teeth 
and gums as the result of its use. A single week should 
be sufficient to demonstrate its benefits. 

This exerciser can be procured by mailing $1.00 to the 
inventor, Edwin J. Ross, 1416 Broadway, New York City. 


42 



BAD BREATH 

This condition is sometimes due to local causes such 
as bad teeth, sore gums or decayed food particles in the 
mouth. In at least nine cases out of ten however, bad 
breath especially of the more offensive types, is due to 
bowel trouble or to stomach trouble that has been brought 
on by bowel trouble. 

Millions of people suffer from bad breath and recently 
a number of advertisements have appeared in the news¬ 
papers and magazines and elsewhere which describe the 
horrors, discomforts and losses that accompany this condi¬ 
tion, which is medically known as halitosis. These adver¬ 
tisements all depict the wonders of one mouth-wash or 
another and claim that by washing the mouth with so-called 
antiseptic solutions, bad breath can be banished in most 
cases. 

The truth is that not even a local case of this kind 
can be relieved except for a few minutes at a time by any 
mouth-wash or gargle whatsoever. Unless these medicines 
were capable of curing bad teeth and doing away with 
pyorrhea, empyemia, diseased tonsils and so forth, they 
could have no influence in checking this malady. Not even 
the advertisements claim this. Long before the recent 
vogue of mouth-washes appeared, people have attempted 
to disguise their breaths after a very hearty meal or an 
over-indulgence in meat or cheese or other irritating foods. 
Peppermint lozenges, cloves and all varieties of mints, chew¬ 
ing gums and perfumed sweets have been invented for this 
purpose. By constantly keeping one of these “breath puri¬ 
fiers” in the mouth, the bad odors arising from a clogged 
bowel, a disordered stomach or a sick mouth can be dis¬ 
guised. These things however, can in no way help to cure 
bad breath or the things which cause it. 

A diet of fruits, light vegetables with a little milk, 
whole wheat bread, some nuts and dried fruits and only 


43 


an occasional meal of meat or fish combined with long 
walks in the open air and other natural curative methods 
will soon change the breath of the butcher shop into the 
breath of the orchard and garden. The gift of nature to 
those who eat natural foods is a sweet, pure breath that 
is memorable of apple blossoms and orange groves and 
the smell of new mown hay. 

Wherever the causes appear to be local, this general 
treatment must be resorted to as well, although it would 
be well to read the article on the teeth and gums in this 
issue and apply whatever local methods may be necessary. 

BILIOUSNESS 

Biliousness is a name given to a condition in which 
an overdose of bile has gotten into the small intestine and 
made its way into the stomach. Vomiting, nausea, and a 
general catarrhal condition of the stomach is the result. 

The reason for such an overflow is due as a rule to 
overeating, especially of fatty foods because the bile in the 
liver is intended to act chiefly on fats. In such a case, 
the liver has grown so accustomed to pouring bile into 
the intestine that it continues to do so even when it is 
no longer necessary. Jaundice is another result of an over¬ 
flow of bile from the liver. 

The only way to cure a tendency towards biliousness 
or jaundice is to eat less fats and more of the so-called 
acid fruits and vegetables. Combined with other natural 
methods of living, this is an unfailing remedy for these 
troubles. 


COATED TONGUE 

Practically every ailment, even an accident to a leg or 
an arm may bring on coated tongue. It is a sign of elimina¬ 
tion. The tongue is one of the means of eliminating poisons 
from the body and when this elimination is in a very ac¬ 
tive state the dirt gathers and adheres to the tongue. Or¬ 
dinarily, these eliminations are easily handled by the fluids 


44 


in the mouth which wash away the dirt and by the air that 
is always present in the mouth. But when the body is 
out of order and more waste material than usual is elim¬ 
inated into the mouth, the saliva is weakened and cannot 
take care of this condition. The result is the tongue re¬ 
mains coated until the body returns to health again. When 
the coating is slight, it is as a rule, only a sign of a mild 
condition of indigestion or constipation. When it is heavily 
coated, it may be a sign of almost any serious disorder in 
the body. It is only a sign however, and not a disorder in 
itself and it is foolish to try to scrape the tongue or in 
any way to get rid of the coating on it without attempting 
to find the real cause of this symptom and removing that 
cause. There is really no advice to be given regarding 
coated tongue, except to say that the general health should 
be built up and then this symptom will disappear. 

A clear tongue is, however, not a dependable sign of 
good health. Disordered nerves and weakened organs have 
been known to exist while the tongue remained either com¬ 
paratively or wholly clear. However, in a general way, it 
may be taken as a fairly acceptable symbol of good health. 

Occasionally, a coated tongue may only show that 
old lesions are being healed or that more or less ancient 
waste accumulations are being removed. In such cases, 
the body, already fairly clean, is going through an ad¬ 
ditional house cleaning. 

Here, it is a sign of increasing good health. 

Lastly, it should be understood that coated tongue is 
not to be feared. It is essentially a sign of elimination. It 
may mean that sickness is ended. It need not at all mean 
that sickness is beginning. 


45 


GOITRE 

Goitre is supposedly a gradually developed enlarge¬ 
ment of the thyroid gland and shows itself on either side 
of the neck or sometimes in front of the throat. It is 
generally painless, soft and elastic. Occasionally, it affects 
the wind pipe and gullet and interferes with breathing. 

Many things have been held responsible for the cause 
of goitre. Certain water supplies have been blamed for 
instance, but nevertheless goitre is found in many places 
where the water can be. in no wise blamed. A community of 
ten thousand may have ten goitre cases. Nine thousand, nine 
hundred and ninety of the people in this community drink 
the same water as the other ten and have no trouble of this 
kind. Only ten have goitre and yet the water may be blamed 
for this condition. Of course there are communities where 
a large percentage have goitre and here there may be some 
sense in attributing the cause to the drinking of polluted 
water or water lacking in certain mineral elements or con¬ 
taining too much of these elements. The modern theory 
held by medical men regarding goitre is that it is due to 
some disarrangement in the secretions of the thyroid gland. 

Whatever the cause of goitre may be and its exact 
cause is hardly known, yet a cure is possible. A natural 
life continued over a space of many months may be re¬ 
quired in order to accomplish this, but it can be accepted 
as a practical certainty, that a cure will finally be arrived at. 

If a long total fast or even a partial fast which includes 
the eating of fruits or the drinking of milk, can be under¬ 
gone under the direction of a capable physician who be¬ 
lieves in fasting, then a cure may be achieved quite rapidly. 

In conclusion, let us say that although the particular 
cause of some ailments may not be known, all disease is 
caused by wrong living of one kind or another. If, for 
instance, the habits of eating, of the goitre victim, will 
be examined, it will be found that they are sadly out of 


46 


order. In every case, it will be found that either a great 
excess of animal food is eaten or even more commonly, a 
great amount of unnatural starches is consumed. Such 
foods are bound to lead to trouble of some sort and it can 
never be foretold as to exactly what ailment will be pro¬ 
duced in a given individual. When a gland is affected by 
any form of wrong living, strange phenomena may be 
produced. No matter how puzzling these may be, right 
living always solves the puzzle. 


HEART TROUBLE 

Though there are many different forms of heart trouble 
they are all caused by the same habits of living. When 
we know what these habits are, it should not be difficult 
to effect a cure. 

First of all, in order to understand how the heart gets 
out of order it is necessary to know that the heart is a 
muscle which begins its work before birth and does not 
end its activities until death has set in. It is normally 
one of the strongest organs in the body and one of the 
last to give way to abuse, and yet heart trouble is the 
cause of a great percentage of all deaths in this country. 

Indeed heart trouble is looked upon as being so fatal 
that the average person when told that he suffers from 
such a condition practically gives up hope of ever being 
cured and sets out on a decline which can only end in 
one way. 

There is really no reason for such a gloomy attitude 
toward this very common ailment. It is most assuredly 
curable in all young and middle-aged people. Even in 
elderly people, if it is taken hold of in its earlier stages. 


47 


the disease or weakness can be arrested and the heart can 
be so improved as to function almost perfectly for a great 
many years. In fact, if very carefully treated it may be 



General view of the Heart and Lungs. 

Trachea, or wind-pipe. a. Aorta, p. Pulmonary 
artery. U 2, Branches of the pulmonary 
artery, one going to the right, the other 
to the left lung. h. The heart. 

said to be at least partially curable in almost any stage 
and at almost any age. 

Two Methods of Treatment,—Medical and Natural 

Hitherto, heart trouble has been treated by telling 
the patient to rest, to move slowly and cautiously, in fact, 
never to make a strenuous movement of any kind, to be 
as calm and unemotional as possible, and in general to be 
quiet for the few years of life that remain and to prepare 
for the ultimate quiet of the grave. 


48 



This form of treatment is almost the exact opposite 
of the new methods of treating this trouble, which is in all 
cases due to the very inactivity and general lack of move¬ 
ment which is advised as a cure. 

It may be stated as an axiom that no really active 
person who does not overeat, ever has heart trouble. 

It is only necessary again to recollect that the heart 
is a muscle and that the law of all muscle is that it must 
be kept normally and healthfully active if it is to thrive. 
It is impossible to maintain a strong and really active 
heart in a weak, undeveloped, and inactive body, especially 
when that body is gorged with rich and highly spiced foods, 
and dosed frequently with alcohol, coffee, tea and medicine. 

In running or exercising or playing strenuously, the 
heart beats fastest, and in beating fast it develops and 
grows strong. In walking or in mild exercise the heart 
is more gently stimulated, is not quite so powerfully de¬ 
veloped but is still kept in fair condition. In such condi¬ 
tion we may be certain that there will never be anything 
physically wrong with the heart. In moving about slowly 
and lazily, in looking upon oneself as delicate and weak, 
and refusing to develop one's body for fear of injuring it, 
in refraining from all real activities or strong emotions, 
we hold the heart back. It is made to beat slowly. The 
heart is weakened and not strengthened by sitting a great 
deal, standing a lot, and lying down to rest or sleep for 
too many hours without strenuous labor to counteract the 
excessive rest. The heart is made to beat so slowly and so 
feebly at such times, that the muscle of which it is com¬ 
posed, does not get sufficient exercise, and grows soft and 
feeble along with the other muscles of the body. 

If we add to this the stimulants that such people often 
take for the purpose of making them feel artificially better. 
If we take into account the coffee and the tea and the 
heavy meat diet upon which such people often try to 
subsist,—we can understand how the heart is abnormally 
irritated and driven by these artificial aids. 


49 


It gets into a fretful condition which no longer responds 
to the ordinary calls made upon it by the tissues, which 
demand their normal supply of blood. It is unable to 
pump that blood or to control its flow properly, and then 
a leaking valve and a murmur are set up or some other 
form of heart trouble is produced. 

It becomes like a lazy person who cannot respond 
quickly to any emergency, and who is irritated at the very 
thought of activity. 

Of course in many cases, no matter how the body is 
abused, heart trouble does not result. In such cases, some 
other organ or organs are attacked, while the heart keeps 
on functioning in pretty fair order. But wherever any 
form of heart trouble does exist, the causes mentioned 
above are in nearly every case back of this trouble. Awside 
from great shock or some terrible accident, these might be 
said to be the causes in every case, and even where ac¬ 
cident has deranged the heart, it must have been weak 
prior to the accident. 

In cases where overeating has contributed to the 
causation of heart trouble, there also will be found as a 
rule, lack of exercise and sufficient activity to tone up the 
heart muscles. 

Effect of Coffee, Drugs, Laxatives on the He2urt 

Chronic loss of sleep, too much tea and coffee drinking, 
alcoholism, and particularly the habitual use of drugs, all 
tend to weaken the heart. The common drugs which have 
the worst effect on the heart are aspirin, phenacitin, 
digitalis, nux-vomica, arsenic preparations and bromides 
of all sorts. The continued use of laxatives and stomach 
remedies, also tend to strain the heart by overworking it 
in a purely artificial way, which harrasses this vital organ 
without developing it. 

In such cases especially as a result of coffee, alcohol 
and drug usage, and the excessive use of tobacco, the heart 
pumps the blood rapidly although the tissues may be un¬ 
able to make use of it. While the beat of the heart at 


50 


such a time is rapid, it is not even and strong, but flutter¬ 
ing and uneven and of a shallow nature. The blood is 
not really forced through the tissues but returns hardly 
used. 

It is like the engine of an automobile running “idle’’ 
at a rapid rate. It accomplishes nothing except to wear 
itself out. 

Whereas when the heart is forced to pump blood 
powerfully during exercise or play, the blood is made use 
of to build and develop the tissues of the body. The entire 
body, muscles, lungs, stomach, bowel and heart are de¬ 
veloped in this manner. Every part is synchronized to 
work properly with every other part. 

The whole body is made into a strong, harmonious 
machine, and the heart with all its valves, and the arteries 
and veins extending from it, are built up so that when 
exercise or play are indulged in again, the heart is ready 
to do its work. Only in this way can the heart be made 
to work well. 

If the savage, who was the progenitor of modern man, 
had stopped to consider the condition of his heart while 
hunting or in battle or while trying to escape from an 
enemy or some pursuing animal, he would not have sur¬ 
vived long. He had to have a powerful heart and a per¬ 
fect pair of lungs in order to maintain the activity by 
which he lived. 


Relief and Cure 

Modern man need not cultivate quite so strong a heart 
or such wonderful lungs in order to live in the present 
day, but if he is to live at all, he must exercise, he must 
get about on his legs quite a little and he must engage 
in other activities, or his heart and lungs, which were 
intended for tremendous labors, will break down altogether. 

To cure heart trouble, it would however be foolish 
to immediately engage in strenuous activity. It would not 
do to attempt to run five miles or to engage in a prize fight. 
We must remember that the heart is weak and that it 


61 


needs slow and careful upbuilding. Here, the keynote is 
moderation and patience. The ambition to be well, must 
to some extent be held back. The patient must, especially 
if the heart is in a very bad state, move so slowly in the 
right direction, that it will take a month or more to bring 
about any perceptible change. Still, there should be no 
hardship in doing this as long as we know that ultimately 
a cure or at least a comparative cure is possible, and there 
is no question whatever about this. In at least 90 % of all 
cases, what amounts to a real cure is possible, in fact is 
certain, if the right methods are used and real patience 
and hope are exercised. 


52 


HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE 

High blood pressure is a condition which affects as 
a rule only the middle aged and the old. It is rarely a 
disease of youth. It is like arterio-s,clerosis or hardening 
of the arteries, a condition that gradually grows worse 
with the passing years and it is brought about by the 
same general causes that produce this bugaboo of old age. 

It is due to a slow gathering of poisons in the blood 
stream that cause the blood to press against the walls of 
the veins and arteries and forces the heart to beat rapidly 
without really increasing the speed of circulating. It is 
a peculiar condition in which the blood goes around slowly, 
thick and heavy with impurities which cannot leave it, 
because the skin, bowels, lungs, bladder and hair will not 
help in the process of elimination. 

It is a case of all around clogging or constipation, if 
this term can be given to a condition in which all the 
organs of the body intended for elimination, are laying 
down on the job and refusing to assist the blood, in the 
work of removing poisons from the body. Basically it is 
caused by constipation of the bowel. The retention of 
waste matter in the bowel for many hours longer than it 
should be retained, causes a reabsorption of some of this 
waste material into the body. This waste material is taken 
up by the blood and circulates through the body until the 
lungs or the skin or the bladder can throw it off. 

When after many years the skin is in a weakened 
condition, the lungs are not over strong, and likewise the 
kidneys and bladder can no longer do all this extra work, 
there follows what amounts to a partial breakdown of the 
circulation. Occlusion or stoppage in the veins and arteries 
results again and again from these poison accumulations 
and high blood pressure is achieved. 

Along with high blood pressure comes auto-intoxica¬ 
tion, a further breakdown of the kidneys and bladder, a 
weakening of the heart through overwork of an abnormal 
nature, a weakening of the eyes and in fact a gradual break¬ 
down of the entire system is approached. 


53 


ACID FOODS HELP TO CAUSE HIGH 
BLOOD PRESSURE 


In addition to constipation the eating of large quan¬ 
tities of meat, fish, chicken, eggs and cheese, supplies the 
kidneys with an overload of acids and other waste ma¬ 
terials. This causes the kidneys to fling back a good deal 
of these poisons into the general circulation. This of 
course assists greatly in increasing the blood pressure. 

In fact, there has never been a case of high blood 
pressure in which the victim was not a great consumer 
of animal foods of one kind or another. Therefore there 
is no hope of curing this condition or even of bringing 
about any real relief unless the consumption of animal 
proteins is practically discontinued and a diet consisting 
largely of the light green vegetables and raw fruits is 
adopted. 

Long walks that begin with short walks and develop 
into longer walks only after weeks of such exercise, the 
drinking of a great de^l of cold water and breathing a 
great deal of fresh air, are also absolutely essential towards 
a cure. 

The amount of food consumed should gradually be 
cut down, as the high blood pressure victim is usually in¬ 
clined to eat too heartily. Coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, 
drugs of all sorts, especially laxatives, are also very injuri¬ 
ous to the high blood pressure victim. In fact these latter 
by themselves can often cause high blood pressure with 
but the slight intervention of any other cause. There need 
be no fear of the effects of high blood pressure if the 
patient will proceed to treat it rationally and without fear, 
and if for the time being the lure of the flesh pot will 
be forgotten. 


54 


INDIGESTION 

Indigestion is simply the inability to digest foods 
properly or quickly enough. This is due to a variety of 
causes, chiefly wrong diet and lack of sufficient exercise 
and fresh air. 



Digestive Organs, _ 

5. Esophagus. 9. Stomach. 10. Liver, 
li. Gall-bladder. lU. Pancreas, 13, 13. The 
duodenum. The small and large intestines are 
represented below the stomach. 


An excess of fatty or fried foods or highly concocted 
and mixed foods of any kind will tend to bring on this 


55 






condition. Sometimes a single dish which has been over¬ 
cooked or over-prepared will bring on a sudden attack of 
indigestion. As a rule, however, it is only after a very 
large meal which has followed a continued punishment of 
the stomach and intestines with an overload of rich foods 
that indigestion manifests itself. Constipation also helps 
to bring on a slowing up of the digestive functions by 
interfering with the moving of waste material into the 
bowel from the small intestine. The small intestine in 
turn slows up in its work of digestion, in order that it 
should not overload itself with waste material. This causes 
a slowing up of the working of the stomach, for the small 
intestine refuses to take further supplies from the stomach. 
When the stomach is forced to retain any food whatever 
for too long a time, indigestion is brought about. 



56 







HOW HEART-BURN IS PRODUCED 

Indigestion may manifest itself in the form of acids 
seeping back from the stomach into the mouth or it may 
take the form of gases or on the other hand, it may give 
rise to a pain in the center of the chest which is commonly 
called “heart burn.’^ This last condition is produced by 
the gases and acids which come up from the stomach and 
enter the aesophagus or food tube which leads to the 
stomach from the mouth. The irritation of these acids 
and especially of the gases, which tend to spread the 
aesophagus in their efforts to escape into the mouth, bring 
about the painful burning sensation which is associated 
with heart burn, which is after all only a symptom of 
indigestion. The swallowing of bi-carbonate of soda, 
charcoal tablets, milk of magnesia or other drugs, tends 
temporarily to slow up the production of acids in the 
stomach. The stomach however, soon rids itself of these 
medicines and the acids reappear in the small intestine 
where they are not so liable to set up pains and aches 
but where a much worse condition is produced. This 
condition may eventually show itself in the form of ap¬ 
pendicitis or peritonitis or it may take some other form, 
but it will invariably cause trouble of a much more serious 
nature than ordinary indigestion or heart burn. 

The cure for indigestion lies in an improved diet. 
Where the cause has been largely a matter of overeating, 
less must be eaten. In all cases it will be found that 
less fatty foods, less animal foods, no denatured starches 
and a simpler preparation and mixture of foods that are 
eaten by the victim of this condition will tend to quickly 
bring about a cure. In fact indigestion is easily cured 
unless it is of many years' standing and even then, a cure 
need not take more than a month or two as a rule. 

Exercise, long walks, the drinking of water whenever 
thirst requires and an increased amount of fresh air both 
in the home and at work, will be found speedily effective 
in curing this condition. 


57 


CANCER 

The very name of cancer is held in such dread by the 
majority of people that it is difficult for them to reason 
rationally on the subject. Nevertheless, it may be said 
at the very outset of this article that the nature of cancer 
is now pretty thoroughly understood and that we believe 
a cure can be accomplished by natural methods without 
the aid of the knife, the Xray, radium or drugs or any 
other artificial method whatsoever. At the same time it 
may be said on the authority of some of the greatest cancer 
specialists that none of the present day medical methods 
are capable of curing cancer and therefore any suggestion 
of a natural method for its cure ought to be welcome to 
all sufferers from this malady as well as to all others in¬ 
terested in the truth. 

Certainly if medicine and surgery have failed and are 
failing daily to cure or to effect any real relief in true 
cases of cancer, then of course, only the purely natural 
methods are left to offer us any hope whatever. If it 
is further claimed, as we do claim, that these methods are 
capable of achieving a complete cure and that this cure 
is accomplished within a year at most, then there is all 
the more reason for looking into the facts as they will be 
briefly presented in these pages. 

What is Cancer? 

First of all, it is necessary to present the accepted 
medical view of what a cancer consists of ^—a view with 
which we have no quarrel at all. The proposition is that 
cancer is due to a rapid proliferation of the cells. In plain 
words this is the breaking up of individual cells which 
multiply rapidly, each cell splitting in half and forming 
two cells which then go on splitting up almost indefinitely. 
The affected area grows constantly and finally causes 
death by obstructing the flow of the blood through the 
affected parts and also by poisoning the blood stream with 
the waste materials flung off by these siclfly and weakened 
cells. 


58 


When the affected tissue is removed by the knife or 
by other means, the cancer makes its appearance again 
either in the same region or sometimes in another part of 
the body. It does not disappear however, because the 
poisons which brought about the cancerous condition still 
remain in the body and not only do they remain, but they 
are reproduced and added to continually with every meal 
and through every other wrong habit of living. 

Does Wrong Eating Cause Cancer? 

The question arises as to how we can be sure that 
wrong habits of living produce cancer. May it not be on 
the other hand, that some microscopic organism gets into 
the body and brings about this malignant condition? The 
answer is that in every case of cancer, without exception, 
we find one or both of the following conditions. The 
patient is as a rule, run down in health and nervous energy. 
Secondly, the patient is an unusually large consumer of 
animal foods. 

In those cases where a person may seem to be robust 
when the cancer first makes its appearance, this only seems 
so to the outward eye. In reality the patient’s general 
condition is anything but enviable, and in all cases the 
intake of animal foods is as a rule, above the average. 
Likewise, a condition of chronic constipation is almost in¬ 
variably found back of the cancerous condition. 

An Experiment 

If human cells are taken from any part of the living 
tissue and placed upon a slide beneath the microscope and 
various poisons found in the colon or in other parts of 
the human body are applied to this tissue, the cells can 
be made to proliferate or multiply prodigiously exactly as 
is the case in cancer. 

This is simply an effort on the part of the cells to 
fight these poisons and this fight may go on many years 
within the human body before an accumulation of these 
cells will result. For as a rule, the broken up cells are 

59 


flung out of the body after they have done their best to 
absorb the poisons which had been attacking them. When 
the body begins to lose its power to handle properly these 
injured cells and the poisons which weakened them, an 
accumulation within the body of both poisons and broken 
cells, may take place. 

Further Remarks on Cell-Proliferation 

While we are on the subject of cdl-proliferation,—it 
may be well to remind the physician that wherever a cut 
or a bruise occurs in the body, a process of rapid cell- 
proliferation takes place. 

The only way that a cut can be healed is by the sac¬ 
rifice of a great number of cells, blood-corpuscles, etc. 
Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that no abnormal 
poison is ever handled by the body, where a certain amount 
of cell-proliferation does not take place. 

If this is so,—and all up-to-date physicians will readily 
admit that it is,—then it should be sufliciently clear that 
an acid and poison-filled body can bring about a state 
of cell-proliferation which, instead of being quickly over¬ 
come, continues to spread because of a weakened blood¬ 
stream. 


Where Cancer Usually Occurs 

An accumulation of broken or multiplied cells, is 
usually found in a part of the body which is subject to 
great irritation such as the stomach,—which is irritated 
by acid forming foods and by overeating, etc., or in the 
genital organs in women which are irritated by ignorant 
or unnatural living in this regard,—or in the breast in 
the case of women who have not properly nursed their 
children,—or who have not nursed them at all,—or where 
the breast has been sympathetically affected because of 
their close relationship to the genital organs which may 
be diseased, in some other way. 

In men it sometimes occurs in the mouth due to the 
continual biting on a cigar or pipe and to tobacco smoking 


60 




itself, etc. It also affects the rectum in people who are 
severely constipated and whose bowels are continually filled 
with an acid mass due to an acidulous diet. 

Drugs Help to Produce Cancer 

Wherever cancer may be present however, the cause 
is basically the same, no matter what local causes help 
to bring it on. To illustrate the peculiar way in which 
this works out. An individual who has been treating him¬ 
self or herself for constipation with various laxatives for 
a long period of time may apparently suddenly find him¬ 
self suffering from a cancer. In this case, while constipa¬ 
tion was the great predisposing factor, the very drugs that 
were used to overcome it, helped to aggravate the original 
cause as well as to destroy tissue and blood in the body. 
In this way the body was gradually weakened to the point 
where it was possible for a cancer to make its appearance. 
Furthermore, a person may have had some other sickness, 
apparently unrelated to constipation and have used a great 
deal of medicine for this sickness. This medicine may 
have even been applied externally and thus absorbed into 
the body from the skin and yet this medicine has de¬ 
stroyed a great many blood cells and perhaps many other 
cells as well in its passage through the body. This destruc¬ 
tion of blood and other cells gradually helped to bring 
about a weakened condition which permitted a cancer to 
form. 

At the bottom of’every case of cancer however, will 
be found invariably, the meat, fish, chicken, egg and cheese, 
and white bread diet which originally destroyed the power 
of the body to handle its own poisons, as well as outside 
poisons such as drugs, which may have entered it. 

A person in fair health may for instance abuse certain 
organs of the body terribly. He may smoke a great deal, 
for instance, and so long as the diet is not too bad and 
sufficient fresh air, sunshine and exercise are had, a can¬ 
cer could hardly form. If an individual has, however, 
been pretty thoroughly weakened by wrong diet and the 


61 


blood stream is fairly thick with acids and various waste 
materials absorbed from the bowel or from a vitiated at¬ 
mosphere, etc., then the probability of cancer increases,— 
especially as the individual passes beyond the years of 
greatest resistance to disease. In fact, the increase in the 
death rate from cancer in the United States has been so 
great in the last few years that present day statistics seem 
to show that one in ten die of cancer. 

What Dr. Mayo Says About Cancer 

Dr. Mayo, supposedly the greatest cancer surgeon in 
America at the present day, has made several statements 
to the effect that the great increase in cancer in modern 
civilized countries is undoubtedly due largely to the kind 
of food we eat and the commercialized preparation of many 
of our grains and cereals as well as other foods. He has 
also stated that undoubtedly the heavy meat diet is to 
some extent responsible for cancer. 

Although Dr. Mayo resorts to the knife in cases of 
cancer, which we do not at all recommend, yet he realizes 
that this thing which he attempts to remove with the knife 
is produced by wrong eating. This,—despite the fact that 
he does not attempt to cure by advising right eating. 

Undoubtedly he believes such a cure impossible. It 
is as if a person were to walk a mile in one direction and 
then wonder how he was to get back to his starting point, 
when all he would have to do is to turn around and retrace 
his steps and soon he would find himself at the exact spot 
where he began his walk. Many other physicians and sur¬ 
geons have more or less hazily recognized that the diet 
of the patient has something to do with his cancerous con¬ 
dition, but rarely do they make any effort whatever to try 
to retrace the course of the disease, to make the patient 
go back along the road which he has traveled. Surely 
this is not at all an impossible thing to do nor is it very 
difficult. It should certainly not be too great a hardship 
for the cancer patient to drop the diet which has caused 
his trouble, to eat less of the meats and more green vege- 


62 


tables and raw fruits and yet these things are but rarely 
resorted to and then only by people who believe in the 
natural methods of cure. Though whenever these methods 
are used they never fail to bring about almost immediate 
relief and eventually they cure. 

How Cancer is Cured 

To visualize and explain how cancer can be cured 
by proper diet, etc., it is only necessary for us to explain 
that it is a disease produced by poisons which circulate 
in the body, poisons which a healthy body manages to 
throw off through the bowel, bladder, skin, lungs, hair, etc. 
These poisons are continually added to by wrong eating, 
especially by the flesh-foods which contain a great amount 
of tissue destroying urea, phosphoric acid, guanine, indul, 
decalcomaine and other poisons of decomposition. 

These dead things taken into the body inevitably over¬ 
work the channels of elimination especially the kidneys and 
bladder. When this occurs the poisons back up into the 
general circulation again and are often deposited directly 
in certain tissues because the blood is weary of carrying 
them round and round endlessly. 

Repeated accumulations of these poisons in any part 
of the body may after long years produce any condition 
from a cancer down to an ordinary cold. 

The problem of getting rid of cancer is simply the 
problem of stirring up the eliminative functions of the body, 
getting them to operate better and better and more and 
more naturally. It is a problem of stirring up the blood 
and driving it rapidly through the system, of cleansing the 
blood by means of fresh air taken into the lungs, sunshine, 
fresh air and of clean water coming in contact with the 
skin to help it eliminate. It is a problem of eating such 
foods as will at the same time possess the nutritive ele¬ 
ments, particularly the mineral elements which will go 
to build up the red blood corpuscles and recreate a healthy 
blood stream. Once the blood stream begins to free itself 
of the clogging waste materials, it will set about the work 


63 


of carrying and removing the debris and the general ac¬ 
cumulation of waste material from all over the body. This 
work will go on until the tissues are cleansed of all ab¬ 
normal poisons and this includes the dead and the half 
dead cells and the poisons in the blood which composes the 
cancer itself. 

One can picture a street into which the householders 
on either side have flung their garbage and ashes, sewage 
and so forth for a long time without let or hindrance. The 
overworked street cleaners have gradually given up hope 
of ever really getting the street clean again. They have 
swept great amounts of this dirt up into pile after pile 
or perhaps into one great pile at some part of the street. 

Suddenly the administration of the town awakens to 
the danger of this condition which is beginning to affect 
all the streets round about and in fact the entire town 
through which the dirt is dragged by the wheels of vehicles, 
the feet of horses and pedestrians and also blown by the 
wind. Likewise, the people in the rest of the town have 
gradually become careless of their habits as they have 
seen the impossibility of keeping clean while others filled 
the neighborhood with filth. 

The administration issues stringent orders that no 
more filth must be dumped into the street and that all 
the accumulated debris must be removed by the street 
cleaning department. For days or weeks, the work may 
go on. As no further rubbish is flung into the street, the 
situation is soon under control. Finally the hose is turned 
upon the last remaining vestiges of filth that stick to the 
gutter and these are washed down the sewer. 

If the tenants living on this street can thereafter be 
kept from again polluting it, if they can be educated to 
a real sense of hygiene, the filthy street which was spread¬ 
ing dirt and disease throughout the town with its great 
cancerous heap of intermingled garbage and rubbish can 
become a beautiful, well paved and cleanly thoroughfare 
and the whole town be improved by this change. 


64 


It is only necessary to get the scavengers of the body 
at work, to throw no more filth into it, to keep the sewers 
of the body open and to stir up the work of washing and 
cleansing and purifying which nature alone can do, and 
the cure of even such a dreaded malady as cancer is ac¬ 
complished. The diseased tissue is gradually reduced by 
right eating and right living until it is utterly absorbed 
by the blood, which carries it into the organs of elimina¬ 
tion where it leaves the body altogether. The rejuvenated 
blood which was formerly unable to take care of the ac¬ 
cumulated poisons within it, now easily rebuilds the in¬ 
jured part and perfect health exists, perhaps for the first 
time, in the diseased body. 

ULCER OF THE STOMACH 

A patient suffering from ulcer of the stomach will as 
a rule be told that he must undergo an operation and 
very frequently after an operation of this kind has been 
performed, the ulcer returns and then of course a further 
operation is advised. In the meantime, as a rule, the 
patient’s general health gradually declines and he becomes 
either a total or a semi-invalid. Nevertheless, the question 
never seems to enter the mind either of the physician or 
the patient to inquire as to the cause of the ulcerated 
condition of the stomach. It seems to be an accepted 
fact that if an ulcer exists, it must be surgically removed 
and no questions asked. 

If the history of an ulcer case is gone into, however, 
it will be invariably discovered that the afflicted individual 
has been a great eater of meat, fish, chicken or eggs, or 
if the ulcer is in the duodenum or intestine it may also be 
due to a chronic constipation which in turn is due to an 
excessive starchy diet. 

In every case of ulcer of the stomach or other parts 
of the digestive system where a diet was followed, consist¬ 
ing of raw fruits, raw green vegetables and after a while, 
cooked vegetables of the juicier type, and also milk with 
a slight amount of whole wheat bread, the trouble has 


65 


been almost immediately arrested and in time completely 
cured. The raw fruit and raw vegetable diet particularly, 
succeed in effecting a cure very rapidly often in from three 
to six months and in no case is the ulcer bothersome after 
the first two months of this diet. 

When the worst evidences of this ailment have declined 
or disappeared, the cooked vegetable, milk and whole wheat 
bread diet can then be added to the raw fruit and raw 
vegetable diet. But the patient should never overeat even 
of these foods as in all ulcerated conditions, the digestive 
organs are very weak and overloading them even with the 
curative foods, tends to slow up the cure. Now it may 
be asked why this diet is advised and how we can be sure 
that meat and fish, poultry and eggs can be the cause of 
this ailment or that denatured cereals may play a great 
part in causing it. The answer is that all these foods are 
acid producing, especially the animal proteins. 

Meat and Canned Foods Help to Produce Ulcers 

All flesh foods when entering the stomach, begin to 
turn into acid chyle. They also contain as a rule, a great 
amount of urea and other waste materials that were in the 
cells of the animal at the time it was killed, and these 
waste materials are acidulous and in general irritating 
especially to an overworked and weakened stomach. 

When the individual who is afflicted with a weakened 
digestive system is likewise in a nervous condition and 
in general exhausted from worry or overwork or some other 
cause, the waste materials in the food will begin to inflame 
the lining of the stomach, duodenum, small intestine or 
other parts of the digestive system. This inflammation 
may gradually bring about a soreness so great that the 
mucous lining will be eaten away and an ulcer is the 
result. 

The eating of canned or adulterated foods also may 
tend to bring about a condition of this kind, because of 
the almost inorganic nature of the food. The life of such 
food has been sapped by remaining in the can together 


66 


with various preservatives that are usually added by the 
manufacturers. Aside from these injurious factors, the 
effect of the tin and solder itself upon the food is such as 
to create an irritation in the stomach independent of any 
acids that may or may not be present in the canned food. 
Although as a rule, all canned foods tend to turn at least 
partly acid in the digestive system. 

One can readily realize this by permitting the food 
to remain in the original can or even taking it out of the 
can and placing it in a separate container and leaving it 
stand a while. The sour or fermenting nature of this food 
after remaining exposed to the air for even a short time 
should convince anyone of the general acidity of canned 
foods. Even canned fruits tend to ferment and turn alco¬ 
holic when the original container is once opened. It may 
be questioned however,—how an ulcer once formed can 
be cured by any diet whatever? The answer is that when 
once the cause of the ulcer is removed,—the irritation 
which keeps the ulcer from healing naturally is also re¬ 
moved. Suppose for instance that an acid condition of 
the stomach and the other digestive organs produces an 
inflammation which in turn produces an ulcer. When you 
remove this acid condition the inflammation is bound to 
decline and the reason for the continuation of the ulcer 
disappears. Nature can then go about the work of gradu¬ 
ally healing the sore and aching tissues. 

If one should have a cut on the finger or hand and a 
sore should form there through constant irritation in using 
the hand or through dirt coming in contact with the cut, 
it would rarely be advised even by the strongest believer 
in surgery, that the finger or hand should be cut off or 
even operated upon in any way, unless gangrene set in. 
Instead of operating, the affected part would be cleansed 
and kept clean and gradually the sore spot would heal and 
the finger or hand would be as good as ever. It is impos¬ 
sible however, to wash the digestive system in the same 
way that we would wash and cleanse the sore on the sur¬ 
face of the body. 


67 


How Pure Blood Removes Ulcers 

Nature however has provided methods for cleaning and 
purifying the digestive system which are just as perfect 
as any hygienic methods that we can apply to the outside 
of the body. If this were not so, then the w'aste that 
would accumulate in the process of digestion would quickly 
poison the entire body. Nature has made provision 
for the elimination of this waste and for the washing, 
sponging and cleansing several times a day of the entire 
digestive tract and in fact of every part of the body. When¬ 
ever for instance,—an apple, an orange, a pear or any other 
juicy fruit is eaten, this cleansing process is made most 
efficient. These fruits contain a great deal of water which 
is held in the cells of the fruit almost throughout the 
process of digestion and this water combined with the cells 
form a spongy mass which washes and scrubs the entire 
digestive system on its way through the body. When 
tissue-destroying acids have inflamed or injured the lining 
of the stomach or intestine and these tissue destroying 
foods arc at least temporarily left out of the menu. When 
fruits are eaten instead; or such light vegetables as celery, 
lettuce, tomatoes and so forth, the result is a continuous 
sponging and cleansing of the digestive system. At the 
same time no new poison enters into the digestion, to begin 
again the work, of irritating the organs connected with this 
process. It can readily be seen therefore that when the 
blood is no longer interfered with in its efforts to heal 
the sore parts. When these sore parts are furthermore 
washed and cleansed several times a day by antiseptic 
substances, the healing process should begin. As the purity 
of the blood increases through the fact that the poisonous 
and acid making foods have been left out, this healing 
process grows more and more rapid and thorough, until 
all harmful traces, of the ulcerated condition are removed. 

Ulcer Victims Should not Despair 

It is hard of course, for a person who is afflicted with 
an ulcer of this kind to have any faith in a cure which is 


68 


not in some way connected with surgery or at least medi¬ 
cine or perhaps even electricity. Sometimes even the faith 
in these methods is shaken by repeated failures to cure 
but still the faith in any new method is likewise destroyed. 
The patient feels that his case is practically hopeless, that 
he must go on suffering all his life without any real hope 
of relief and even less hope of cure. It is therefore necessary 
for anyone who is so afflicted and whose thoughts run in 
these channels to remember that the methods that 
he has tried have been methods advised by the regular 
medical school. That they were in no way based upon 
nature, which is after all, even according to the statements 
of the most hidebound medical practitioners the only cura¬ 
tive power. 

It is ridiculous in the extreme for one to despair at 
finding water in the midst of fertile fields simply because 
one had found no water in a desert. It may readily be 
admitted that ordinary medical methods and even the diet 
that is sometimes outlined by medical men for the cure of 
an ulcerated condition of the digestive system are abso¬ 
lutely futile and hopeless, so far as a permanent cure is 
concerned. 

In fact, even in the few cases where the ulcer does 
not return but where the patient continues to lead the 
same life which was led previous to the appearance of 
the ulcer, some other trouble will be caused, perhaps in 
some other part of the body. The digestive system will 
also remain impaired even though an actual ulcer may 
not appear again immediately. 

The Effect of Surgery 

When after an operation an ulcer does not recur for 
a number of years and the patient is apparently greatly 
improved, it will always be found that whether consciously 
or not, the patient had turned over a new leaf in regard 
to his habits of living. That he no longer ate as much of 
the injurious foods as previously or that he exercised more, 
led more of an open air life, worried less, kept his body 


69 


cleaner outside and inside, etc. In other words, especially 
in ulcer of the stomach, surgery, may be said never to 
cure this condition at all; but simply to forcibly remove 
it for the time being. 

While thus forcibly removing the ulcer,—the abdomen 
through which the knife has entered and the digestive 
organs through which it has cut are more or less seriously 
injured by this operation. This of course, does not mean 
that this injury is so great as to cause death, but neither 
does the removal of an arm or a leg nor the loss of hearing 
or eyesight or speech bring about death as a rule. An 
injury may be caused but it need not immediately be fatal. 
No surgeon will argue that an operation does not do some 
harm and that the knife should be used if its use can be 
prevented. 

The argument of the surgeon is on the other hand, 
that it is better to cut and save life, even though more or 
less harm is done by the knife and the anesthesia. He 
will say that it is not a question of whether harm is done 
or not, the problem is to choose the lesser evil instead of 
the greater. However, in this case at least, it is not 
necessary to cut at all. A cure can unquestionably be 
accomplished by diet. 

Should the sufferer from an ulcerated condition of the 
stomach or duodenum ask the ordinary surgeon or physi¬ 
cian as regards the merits of diet in such cases, he will 
find that he will be scoffed at and this positive natural 
curative method will be in general pooh-poohed. This 
should not discourage the seeker for health whose intellig¬ 
ence is not utterly warped by the assumptions of the medical 
men who have thus far failed to cure him though they 
have advised him and medicated him endlessly. Further¬ 
more, if he will look into the records of other cases such 
as his own, he will find an endless running to and fro 
amongst doctors and surgeons, hospitals and clinics for a 
cure, but no cure has been effected. 

When a long enough time has passed and the failure 
to cure has brought about death, there is no one left to 


70 


stand by and taunt the doctor with his failure. His mis¬ 
take has been buried and dead men tell no tales. The 
relatives and friends of the victim never feel that the fault 
lies with the doctor or with his methods at all. They place 
the blame for the death of the patient upon nature. 

They say, “The doctors did their best, but the case 
was too difficult; or too far advanced; or complications set 
in; or something else happened which made a cure im¬ 
possible.” In other words, the doctors have done their 
duty but their efforts were not sufficient to overcome the 
malignancy of nature. 

Of course few people know the truth regarding 
disease and health and of nature’s efforts and power 
to cure, and they do not know that the sole cause of 
disease lies in the wrong habits of living of the one afflicted 
with disease and not in any other cause whatsoever. 
Nature, so far from being malignant is continually 
struggling to throw off the results of these wrong habits 
and to maintain and bring back to health the weakened 
body. No matter how much the body has been abused, 
as long as there is a spark of life left, nature will utilize 
that spark to kindle anew the strong flame of real vitality, 
provided nature is given a chance. In other words, if the 
patient will cease to do the wrong things and begin to do 
those things which will assist nature and give her a free 
hand to do her work. 

Nature is Never Malignant 

Nature is never a malignant force within the human 
body, though sometimes in the world outside of the body 
there are forces which may seem malignant to human life 
but which really are rarely so. If we will not seek to 
go contrary to nature’s laws, nothing within us or with¬ 
out us will hurt us. Only a poor understanding of the 
workings of nature, can bring us any harm either within 
us or without. 

The great trouble with our medical friends is that 
they refuse to allow for the normal working of the natural 


71 


forces, but seek to place themselves above Nature and ap¬ 
parently outside of Nature. They want to dictate to Nature, 
with drugs and the knife; to tell Nature what it must do. 
They do not care to work in harmony with natural law. 
Instead, they try to coerce Nature, and we need not be 
surprised if Nature does not heed their dictates. 

When the physician seeks to accomplish some miracle 
with the aid of medicine or surgery or some other artificial 
attempt to cure,—he is as a rule fighting nature and as this 
fight takes place within the human body the result is 
always an injury to the body. Even when the physique is 
strong enough to throw off the drug and to survive the 
use of the knife, it is weakened by the struggle against 
the drug and against the knife. 

Provided that there are natural methods well worked 
out and thoroughly understood which do give relief in 
acute or chronic sickness and disease and which eventually 
accomplish the cure of almost all sickness, weakness and 
disease, then it would certainly seem logical that these 
natural methods should be resorted to. Drugs and the 
knife should be held in the background, at least until the 
natural methods shall have proved a failure. These methods 
may however be said never to fail. They are based on the 
unalterable rules and laws of nature as well as of human 
logic. It surely seems reasonable that when a person has 
eaten his way into a certain disease that he shall eat his 
way out again; that if wrong food has produced an ailment, 
the diet should be corrected and the results are obviously 
bound to be beneficial. 

The only way that we can know as to whether any 
unfavorable condition of the body has been produced by 
wrong diet or by any other cause whatsoever, is by ex¬ 
perimentation. The only way we can experiment and 
achieve results one way or another that cannot be refuted 
or denied, is by depriving the sick or ailing individual of 
those articles of diet which logically seem to be the cause 
of the trouble. Other articles of diet should be substituted 
in such quantities as may seem reasonable,—which at the 


T2 


same time seem to be the least harmful foods in this par¬ 
ticular condition. If these foods are supposed or alleged 
to have an actual curative effect, all the better. 

It only remains to try this cure under otherwise favor¬ 
able circumstances, such as the presence of fresh air, sun¬ 
shine and proper bathing, etc. in the patient’s daily routine. 
If when these methods are tried genuinely and sincerely,— 
they fail to cure,—then it is only logical and just that they 
be thrust aside. All faith in them should be despaired of 
and humanity should go back to the torture of the knife 
and drugs. 

We can say here, however, positively and absolutely, 
this will never be necessary. Natural methods cure; and 
if even a little intelligence is used in their application, they 
cure unfailingly. 



78 


LIVER TROUBLE 


The liver is the largest gland in the body, normally 
w^eighing about four or five pounds. It secretes a thick 
fluid known as bile, which is used by the body for a double 
purpose. One of these purposes is to help to digest fats 
in the duodenum and small intestine. It also acts upon 
starches, helping to turn them into a form of sugar which 
can be assimilated by the blood. 

A quantity of sugar is always retained in the liver as 
a sort of reserve fund which is paid out to the body in 
such quantities as are required. The other separate func¬ 
tion of the bile is to neutralize poisons in the blood and 
also in the food material which may be present in the 
digestive tract. 

When the liver is said to be out of order, it may be 
a case of overwork where too much of the bile has been 
poured out and has flooded the digestive system, or else 
it is a case of underwork. This may be due to the eating 
of constipating foods which produce a lethargic condition, 
first in the stomach, then in the small intestine, then in 
the bowel, and in this way affect the liver sympathetically. 
The liver is further affected by the slowing up of the 
blood which is also largely a product of constipation. 

Frequently, the liver is torpid following a period of 
overwork. It is attempting to rest and recuperate from 
its labors. If food is eaten in great quantities at such a 
time, the liver does not react quickly enough to help in 
its digestion. The result is a feeling of torpidity often 
mixed with a growing discomfort in the pit of the stomach. 

Finally, it may be said that liver trouble is a digestive 
ailment produced by wrong diet and lack of exercise, also 
by overeating. If it were not for these causes the liver 


74 


would never be forced to overwork in order to rest too 
long* after such overwork. Neither would it become lazy 
because of a lazy bowel or a lazy blood stream. 

Alcohol is also a great irritant of the liver and in many 
cases, actually causes cirrhosis of the liver which is a very 
serious condition causing scarring and enlargement of this 
necessary organ. 

There is only one cure for liver trouble, and that must 
be evident when we know the cause. Proper diet and 
general right living will soon bring the liver back to 
normal, except in a case of cirrhosis where a year of cor¬ 
rect living may be necessary before a cure can be accom¬ 
plished. 



75 


GALLSTONES 


Gallstones are deposits of lime salts which form them¬ 
selves frequently after an attack of typhoid fever or some 
other acute disease. They are much more common in older 
people than in younger and old women who are overweight 
are the most frequent victims of all. 

The presence of gallstones may be utterly painless in 
the beginning, but little by little they tend to cause the 
greatest agony. For these pains, the medical men usually 
advise the use of morphine. The only effect of morphine 
or any other drug upon this condition is the temporary 
relief of pain, but has absolutely no effect upon the stone 
itself. 

The only way that a method of relief and cure may 
be discovered is by tracing the salt deposits back to their 
origin. By removing the cause and utilizing the natural 
curative powers of the blood, the stones may be dissolved 
again and reabsorbed into the blood stream or passed out 
through the small intestine into the bowel and thus out of 
the body. 

The formation of stones in any part of the body al¬ 
ways begins with an inflammation in the region where the 
stones are formed. In the case of gallstones, the inflam¬ 
mation may have been caused by the presence of certain 
germs, according to some authorities, such as the typhoid 
germ. It is much more likely, however, that it is produced 
by foreign material which made its way into the gall blad¬ 
der from a weakened blood stream. 

Following the attack of any acute disease, the body 
is of course weakened and every organ including the gall¬ 
bladder has had more than its share of work in nature’s 
effort to accomplish a cure. The overwork of some of 
these organs when the disease has not been handled by 
natural methods, may tend to bring on an inflammation or 
overheating. This overheated or inflamed condition con- 

T« 


tinucs as the patient continues to lead an unnatural life 
and becomes chronic. 

Nature tries to alleviate this inflamed condition by 
rushing great quantities of blood there, but as the blood 
receives no aid from the food eaten by the patient or from 
other natural sources, its healing powers are diminished. 
In such a condition, various salts tend to leave the blood 
and remain in the vicinity of the inflammation. These 
salts are used to wall in the inflammation and keep it from 
spreading further, as the blood for the moment has not 
the direct power to cure the inflammation. 

As time goes on and the blood still remains in its 
weakened condition and the inflammation continues un¬ 
checked, the deposits of these salts are increased. Stones 
are sometimes formed as large as a hen’s egg, completely 
filling up the gall bladder and choking off the duct which 
enters into the duodenum. When this common duct is 
shut off by the stones, bile cannot flow, either from the 
liver or gall bladder to aid in the digestive process. This 
forces the bile back into the blood-stream. 

The pains at this time become fearful, and yet all this 
is only an effort on the part of the body to call the attention 
of the brain to the internal disorder. Pain is only the 
notification that something is wrong. To stifle the pain 
with morphine is only to postpone the issue, and eventually, 
to make matters worse. 

To operate on the gall bladder is not only dangerous 
but does not cure, because the inflammation remains and 
is as a rule increased by the cutting, although there will 
be less pain until new stones are formed. There is also 
some real danger of the operation terminating fatally. 

The proper thing to do in a case of gall stones, is to 
tone up the blood so that it can do its work properly. 

A fruit diet which thoroughly purifies the blood will 
enable it to enter the gall bladder and gradually dissolve 
the stones as well as heal the original inflammation which 
brought on the formation of the stones. It is useless to 
attempt to treat the stones directly, as there is no medicine 

77 


whatever which can enter into the gall bladder or can 
have any effect upon the stones, as most physicians will 
admit. A strong, robust body and a clear blood stream will 
soon return the salts which formed the stones back into the 
blood from which they came. 

An acid blood stream causes inflammation and disease. 
A neutralized blood stream cures disease and relieves in¬ 
flammation. No matter how much the gall stone sufferer 
may strive for a cure in any other direction, he will not 
find it. The specialized fruit diet advised in these pages 
will soon bring relief through a neutralized blood-stream, 
and ultimately, correct living will accomplish a cure. 



78 





DIABETES 

Diabetes is a condition of the body which results from 
the inability of the pancreas to produce sufficient insulin 
for the proper assimilation of starches and sugar by the 
blood. 

When an excessive amount of starches is consumed 
over a long period of time, this valuable organ may be so 
overworked as to become exhausted. This exhaustion pre¬ 
vents the proper secretion of insulin, which is one of the 
elements used by the body in the changing of ordinary 
sugar into such form as the blood can readily make use of. 
When this sugar remains in crystal form in the blood, it 
interferes with the nourishment of the tissues and in this 
way, the entire body is disorganized. 

The present method of handling diabetes by injecting 
insulin extracted from the pancreas of a pig into the human 
body, is ineffective in the long run and must inevitably 
cause far more harm than good. 

For those who really seek a cure for this malady, the 
fruit fast as advised in these pages, should be adhered to 
for several weeks, until every trace of sugar in the blood 
and urine has disappeared. 

The fruit and nut diet should then be followed for sev¬ 
eral days. This should be followed by a generally correct 
diet, such as is outlined in the article on diet. 

The diabetic sufferer should, however, eat very little 
bread or potatoes, and should avoid sweet dried fruits for 
some months at least. 

The diet advised here, combined with proper exercise 
and general right living, will unquestionably accomplish a 
cure of this dread ailment in from one month to six months. 

At present, approximately one-tenth of the deaths in 
this country are due to diabetes. 

Natural treatment, however, removes all fear of death 
and is certain to cure. 


79 


GASTRITIS 

This is a more or less acute inflammation of the lining 
of the stomach brought about by Long continued indiges¬ 
tion. The acids that are formed from the overly fermented 
foods in the stomach of the victim of indigestion are direct¬ 
ly responsible for this inflamed condition, which causes 
pains, vomiting and a general weakening of the entire body. 
It is also a preliminary stage of an ulcerated condition of 
the stomach to which it inevitably leads if it is not cured 
in time. It may be necessary for one suffering from this 
aggravated condition of stomach trouble to go on a fast 
or at least on a fruit diet for a while. A cure is, however, 
easily had though four or five months may be necessary 
before the stomach is thoroughly healed and returns to its 
natural vigor. 


GASES 

Gas may evidence itself either in the bowel or in the 
stomach or intestine. In the bowel, it may be an uncom¬ 
fortable but a painless condition. In the stomach it may 
cause belching and even vomiting and of course may pro¬ 
duce heart-burn and pains of various kinds. In the intes¬ 
tine, it may set up a griping, painful or a nauseating and 
turbulent condition. It will sometimes stir up the fluids 
in the digestive sytem and it will seem as though water 
can be heard moving about in the stomach or intestine. 

Wherever and however it may manifest itself, the 
cause is always produced by the excessive fermentation of 
foods in the stomach or intestine or of waste material rot¬ 
ting in the bowel. The only way to overcome this condi- 


80 


tion is to eat less pasty products of grains and cereals, 
which are the greatest offenders in this respect. By slowing 
up the eliminative process through pasting and clogging 
the small intestine and bowel, they tend to bring on con¬ 
stipation. This in turn causes the production of gases 
which may then arise not only from the constipating foods 
but also from other foods or waste material that may be 
in the digestive or eliminative tract. 

Amongst the largest direct gas producers are beans, 
peas, lentils, pastries, cakes, puddings, white bread and 
white rice. Preserved meats which are very difficult and 
slow of digestion also tend to produce gases. This uncom¬ 
fortable condition may sometimes become so acute that 
the body will become a mass of pains which will be felt 
not only in the abdominal region but also in the chest, 
sides, back and groin. It may also give rise to an almost 
continuous belching and to the emission at all times of 
gases directly from the bowel. 

While following a natural cure, the patient should not 
give way to his condition and permit himself to become 
offensive to all those around him. He should instead, do 
his best to control himself, as giving way to this condition, 
only helps to make it worse and to prolong it. In this 
case, the patient must fight to hold back these gases which 
the body will resolve back into acids and other materials 
and which will be normally eliminated through the bowel 
and other channels. 

It may be argued that it is best to give way to this 
condition and permit the gases to escape, but the only 
result of such a course is to quicken the production of 
further gases from the acid accumulations in the body. 
Especially if the patient is to continue on a wrong diet, 
nothing will be gained as he will continue to produce more 
acids within himself at every meal. It is a question of 
whether it is best for an individual to demean himself in 
the eyes of others as well as in his own eyes or to fight 
and overcome this condition by normal diet, exercise and 


81 


so forth, while in the meantime hiding this condition from 
those around him. The harm that suppression will do in 
this case is utterly negligible and unless the individual 
desires to exaggerate it, the extent of the harm need not 
be considered. 

In many cases where gas has been freely eliminated, 
piles and hemmorhoids have been produced. The produc¬ 
tion of gases has also been increased to such an extent, 
that no matter what foods were eaten, gases were pro¬ 
duced and eliminated almost constantly. 



82 


CONSTIPATION 

Constipation is so widespread that few modern civilized 
people can be said to be entirely free from it. It may 
best be described as a condition of the body in which the 
bowel does not eliminate easily and naturally at least once 
a day. Though of course two or three eliminations are 
more nearly natural and healthful than only one. 

PEOPLE DISLIKE TO ADMIT 
THEY^RE CONSTIPATED 

Many people would hastily deny that they suffer from 
constipation who nevertheless are victims of a serious type 
of this disorder. For it exhibits itself in many and various 
forms. An individual suffering from catarrh may be sure 
that he also suffers from constipation even though the 
bowels may eliminate more than once a day. Likewise 
the victims of many other ailments are in reality at bottom 
only the victims of constipation. It may indeed be asked, 
“How can a person who eliminates once a day be con¬ 
sidered a victim of constipation?” The answer is, that in 
many people, the bowel is continually packed with waste 
material only the last part of which is evacuated each day. 

In such people, the bowel has grown so inured to its 
condition that it continues its partial evacuations almost 
without protest, although the victim of such a condition 
will nearly always suffer from various minor ailments of 
which he may hardly be aware. Such a person may feel 
sluggish all day and will consider the sluggishness a natural 
and normal thing and rarely try to do anything about it, 
except perhaps to swallow an occasional dose of salts or 
some other purgative. 

As a result of his constipation he may for instance be 
troubled with gas, yet hardly take notice of it, or with 
indigestion “heart-burn” or sore-throat or tonsil or adenoid 
trouble or kidney trouble or high blood pressure, etc. Still 
it may never occur to him that these troubles have any 
relationship to the lazy condition of the bowel. 


83 


CONSTIPATION IN CHILDREN 

Children very often can live on a diet which might be 
extremely constipating in a grown-up and yet rarely suffer 
from constipation. The most robust children who are 
forced to live on an unnatural diet will suffer in 
various ways as a result, even though on the whole their 
daily eliminations may be fair or even apparently good. 
It will always be found however, that when children are 
truly healthy, they eliminate twice a day and very easily 
and thoroughly. Such children are great consumers of 
raw fruits and raw vegetables. Otherwise such a healthful 
condition can hardly exist. 

Besides, children are blessed with a much more lively 
internal apparatus to begin with. Secondly, their tremend¬ 
ous activity in play, their keen enjoyment of life, their 
lack of responsibility and the fresh air that they usually 
enjoy to a far greater extent than grown-ups, is greatly 
responsible for the superior condition of their organs of 
digestion and elimination. Yet even in children, how very 
frequent is the curse of constipation and all its attendant 
ills. 

It might almost be said that the sole cause of nearly 
all the ailments of childhood is this basic condition of con¬ 
stipation. For whether it is a child or a grown-up,—white 
bread, white rice, pearled barley, the light varieties of rye 
bread, denatured corn meal and denatured grains and 
cereals in general, are bound to produce constipation in 
some degree. This will in turn produce almost any other 
weakened condition of the body as a whole. 

CELLULOSE, NATURE’S LAXATIVE 

The reason why denatured grains and cereals are the 
largest cause of constipation is due to the fact that the 
natural eliminative elements have been removed from them 
and that is also why they are known as denatured. It 
appears that nature has provided all growing things, 
whether they are grains, cereals, fruits, vegetables or any 
other growing thing, with an element known as cellulose. 


84 


This substance as a rule, forms the bulk of all foods 
in their truly natural state. It is a spongy, porous ma¬ 
terial which acts in the stomach and intestines of both 
animals and human bein,gs as a stimulant towards move¬ 
ment. It forces the digestive organs to work by its very 
bulk and also by the fact that it holds its own water or 
when eaten dry, it absorbs water from the stomach and 
swells up into a soft, mushy pulp which cannot be as¬ 
similated but which only can be passed on from the stomach 
to the small intestine,—and from the small intestine to the 
large intestine or bowel,'—and from the bowel eliminated 
from the body. 

In this process, it sweeps along with it all other waste 
material that may be in the digestive organs at the time. 
For these long muscular bags and tubes can only move 
properly on bulk. When this bulk is not assimilable and 
does not melt from the intestine into the blood stream but 
insists on remaining intact. When at the same time this 
bulk is water soaked but fairly firm,—the intestines are 
forced to move it along in their effort to suck nourishment 
from other materials that may be combined with the cellu¬ 
lose or that may be found in the stomach at the same time 
with it. 

HOW APPLES AND OTHER FRUITS ARE 
ACTED ON BY THE BODY 

As an illustration, suppose a person should eat an 
apple which is after all only a combination of cells in which 
there is a slight amount of sugar, a great deal of water 
and a small percentage of mineral elements. The apple 
would be acted upon by the stomach and prepared for its 
real digestion which must take place in the small intestine. 
This process would take only a little more than an hour. 
The apple would then be pushed into the small intestine, 
which would make every effort to take the sugar and the 
mineral elements out of the cells or cellulose as it is called, 
and to place them in the blood stream. To accomplish this 


SI 


fully, the apple will have been gradually forced through 
the entire twenty-odd feet of small intestine and would 
finally have reached the large intestine or bowel. 

By this time there would be little nourishment left in 
the apple but the bowel would nevertheless find this soft, 
spongy mass shoved into it and more and more of it com¬ 
ing along all the time. The large intestine would then be 
forced to move this along further and further through the 
entire five feet of its length. 

All this time the apple will hardly have shrunk in 
size, having lost only a small percentage of its original 
bulk, which small percentage has been turned into blood. 
The rest of it has gone through the digestive system, 
stimulating a healthful activity all the way through and 
it now finds itself at or near the end of the large intestine 
where it stimulates final elimination. 

HOW WHOLE WHEAT AND BRAN 
STIMULATE DIGESTION AND 
ELIMINATION 

Now let us observe what happens to a grain of whole 
wheat that has been ground up to whole wheat flour, baked 
into bread and then eaten and swallowed. It passes down 
through the aesophagus and enters the stomach. This grain 
of wheat is a highly concentrated food product contain¬ 
ing every element of nourishment that the body may ever 
require. Near the center of the wheat we find a white, 
starchy part. Outside of this white, starchy part and also 
mixed with it there are both fatty and fleshy materials 
known as hydro-carbon or fat, and protein or the meaty 
part of the wheat. Aside from these nourishing factors, 
there are practically all the mineral salts out of which the 
teeth- and bones and much other tissue of the body is either 
largely or at least partly constructed. With these mineral 
elements there is the cellulose in which the whole grain 
is enclosed. This outer part of the wheat which contains 
all these valuable elements, is commonly known under the 
name of bran. 


86 


When this kernel of wheat begins its course through 
the digestive system, the small intestine as in the case of 
the apple, sets to work to extract the nourishment from 
the midst of the cellulose in which the nourishing elements 
find themselves. The pancreatic and intestinal juices are 
poured forth and the starch of the wheat is changed into 
a form of sugar in which it can readily enter the blood 
stream. Other nutritive elements in the wheat have been 
likewise changed into a readily assimilable form both by 
the stomach and the small intestine. 

During this process the intestine slowly shoves this 
material along, gradually taking from the bulk of the cellu¬ 
lose whatever nutriment may be required at the time. 
Meanwhile the cellulose serves to hold the walls of the 
intestine apart so that it can normally do its work of as¬ 
similation. At the same time, in order that all parts of the 
small intestine shall get their share of the work and of the 
nourishment, the cellulose is slowly pushed along until it 
reaches the bowel and there it continues to make its way 
until it finally leaves the body. 

HOW STARCHES PASTE UP THE INTESTINES 

On the other hand, when the outside of the wheat is 
removed in the process of milling and only the starchy 
inside is left and this is made into a nice white bread, 
perhaps pleasing to the eye,—or a wondrous white cake 
or pastry,—or spaghetti or macaroni,—or other white flour 
products,—the body acts on them in this manner. First 
of all, white flour is a pasty material which immediately 
proceeds to choke up the stomach which does its best to 
get rid of it and push it into the small intestine. This is 
a slow process however, because there is no spongy bulk 
to separate the walls of the stomach or intestine, v/hile 
the digestive process is going on. The result is practically 
a collapse of the walls of the stomach and of the small 
intestine. There is not enough bulk to hold them, there 
is no rough but pleasant work for them to do. There is 
only the job of turning the white flour into sugar and this 


87 


is done in a slow and slimy manner. The normal and 
natural stimulation is lacking. 

There is little protein to prepare, little fat to separate 
from the starch, there are no mineral salts to stimulate 
the process of blood making and there is no cellulose to 
force this pasty, starchy, mass along. There is only a 
long, slow work of absorbing the starch into the blood 
stream, an irritating and thankless proposition. Sooner or 
later, this brings about a low-grade, chronic inflammation 
of the stomach, which evidences itself in a chronic catarrh 
or asthma. 

THE COLON RECEIVES POISONS DIRECTLY 
FROM THE BLOOD 

The torpid eliminative condition produced by the de¬ 
natured starches is further complicated by the fact that 
approximately fifty percent of the contents of the bowel 
does not come from the small intestine at all, but instead 
is directly received from the blood, which throws waste 
material from all over the body directly into the bowel. 

This material consists of dead germs, dead blood cells 
and other dead cells and parts of cells. This rotting and 
poisonous mass has little power to stimulate the large 
intestine into activity, especially when it contains pasty 
material taken from the starch filled blood stream. There 
is little or no cellulose here to stimulate the bowel into 
moving and working or to hold its walls apart. The bowel 
tends to adhere to this sticky, poisonous mass, and it is 
only with the greatest difficulty that it is finally eliminated 
from the system. Before it is eliminated however, it suc¬ 
ceeds in poisoning the blood stream, thus bringing about 
numerous ailments. For it must also be understood that 
about five percent of the nourishment of the body is derived 
directly from the bowel. 

Here the last bit of nourishment is sucked into the 
blood stream by the millions of lacteals or hungry little 
mouths that line the large intestine. While these lacteals 
are searching for food they find a rotting mass which 


88 


momentarily grows more and more putrid and after a time 
they are forced to suck up some of this putresence and to 
distribute it through the body. A part of this poisonous 
material is flung into the lungs where it is burned up and 
exhaled through the nose and mouth in the form of carbon- 
dioxide. Some of this poison finds its way into the kidneys 
and from the kidneys into the bladder, from which it is 
eliminated in the urine. Some finds its way into the skin 
which throws it out through the pores. 

When too much of this poison is eliminated by the 
lungs, all forms of nose and throat trouble, bronchial trouble 
and even lung trouble are produced. When an unusual 
amount of it is forced out by the kidneys through the 
bladder, both the kidneys and the bladder and urinary pas¬ 
sages are injured. In this way, many forms of kidney and 
bladder trouble, as well as rheumatic and other uric acid 
ailments are brought about. 

BOILS AND SKIN TROUBLE 
PRODUCED BY CONSTIPATION 

When an excessive amount of this poisonous material 
is thrown into the skin, boils are produced as well as skin 
trouble of every variety, including eczema, acne, psoriasis, 
etc. Even cancer and various forms of ulcers can be traced 
largely back to this great parent trouble of constipation. 
It has been truly said that constipation is the mother of 
all disease. By clogging the bowel we pollute and clog 
the blood stream. The blood stream is the river of life 
out of which both the body and the brain are nourished. 
To pollute the blood stream is to muddy up the stream 
of life and to injure the whole mind and body. 

The denatured grains and cereals and other denatured 
foods from which cellulose, the greatest eliminative factor, 
is removed, are in essence poisons and not foods. While 
they may contain one or two nourishing factors they lack 
the mineral elements that are so essential and vital to the 
true nourishment of the tissues and to the proper makeup 
of the blood. 


89 


Above all, they lack that necessary factor without 
which real assimilation is impossible. Without it, the 
body cannot be kept clean and free of disease. This factor 
is the quality of being eliminative, as well as assimilative. 
For what good is a furnace which burns fuel but from 
which the ashes cannot be removed? What good is that 
fuel which produces so much smoke as to clog the chimney 
and cause it to catch fire? 

Food must be both eliminative as well as assimilative 
and it must be both in the degree that nature has meant 
it to be. In other words, foods must as nearly as possible 
be eaten in their natural state. When an article becomes 
so unnatural and so refined that it is constipating, it should 
cease to be regarded as a food and should be avoided as 
we would avoid the very disease which it brings about. 


DIARRHEA 

Diarrhea is a violent effort on the part of the bowel 
to discharge irritating accumulations of waste material. It 
is usually caused by the determined adherence of excrement 
to the folds of the large intestine. It sometimes follows 
a cold or accompanies some serious disorder. In all cases, 
however, it is an eliminative effort on the part of the body 
and need not be feared at all. The process of evacuation 
should in fact be hastened by the eating of raw, fresh 
fruits exclusively for a day or two. If this is done the 
attack of diarrhea will be followed by a lightened feeling 
all over the body. There will be a feeling of relief and of 
ease that could hardly be gotten in any other way. 

When an attack seems to have been brought on by 
certain foods, the nature of these foods should be examined. 
If fruits brought on the attack, then it is a natural and 
normal eliminative effort of the body. In other words, it 
is a direct attempt at an improved condition of the diges¬ 
tive system and of the body as a whole. When meat, 
particularly preserved meat, or fish or similar animal food 


90 



or some specially noxious concoction has brought on the 
attack of diarrhea, the process has been somewhat differ¬ 
ent. In this case, the body already burdened with ac¬ 
cumulations of waste material and poisons of all kinds, 
is suddenly overburdened to such an extent that some¬ 
thing must be done immediately if serious consequences 
are to be prevented. 

The digestive system gathers all its strength and be¬ 
gins a violent series of revulsions which tend to fling the 
waste material not only out of the digestive system itself 
but also out of the blood and in fact out of the entire 
body. When diarrhea follows or accompanies a violent 
disease, it is nature’s effort to cure the disease directly and 
immediately. If medicines are given to stop the diarrhea, 
fatal results will sometimes follow. Even when such re¬ 
sults are not brought about, great injury is done to the 
body because the poisons are retained in it instead of being 
eliminated. Suppression is never a cure. 

The natural method is to help along this elimination 
by means of a fruit diet, copious water drinking and the 
use of water by means of the internal bath which helps 
to soothe the internal inflammation. Though this latter 
method often prematurely stops the diarrhea and although 
the patient is made to feel better, yet the natural curative 
effort is interfered with and on the whole less poison is 
eliminated from the body than would otherwise be the case. 

In children or in grown-ups, the cure is the same,— 
water drinking and fruit eating, or water drinking alone. 
The water may be either cold or warm according to the 
patient’s wishes. A little lemon juice added to the water 
will help greatly in the eliminative process. 

When diarrhea occurs in nursing infants, it may be 
due to an overrich diet on the part of the mother and she 
should treat herself through proper diet if she is to prevent 
the future occurrence of intestinal inflammation in the child. 
In some rare cases, local inflammation in the region of 
the rectum may cause diarrhea in an infant. Some inflam¬ 
mation is always produced by accumulations of dirt in this 


91 


region and also by too much or too tight clothing. Looser 
clothing, daily baths and an occasional sponging in this 
region are all that are necessary to prevent a recurrence 
of this condition, provided the diet and other matters are 
also attended to. 


INTERNAL BATH 

The internal bath is a method of washing the bowel 
to rid it of waste material. It can be taken in many ways. 
Varied apparatus has been invented for use in this bath. 
The commonest of all and the most readily accessible, is 
the ordinary fountain syringe which will be found in most 
bathrooms. 

If the syringe is filled with about two quarts of warm 
water, ranging from ninety-five to one hundred and ten 
degrees Fahrenheit, and the water is then permitted to 
enter the bowel slowly while sitting in an upright position, 
a fairly good internal cleansing can be accomplished. As 
much water should be permitted to enter the bowel as 
possible and retained for two or three minutes or even 
five minutes. 

The left hand should be used in rubbing the abdomen 
in a sort of circular motion, beginning at the left side 
where the bowel ends and rising up slightly above the 
navel, then moving over to the right side and pressing 
down towards the hip where the appendix is located. The 
massage should be continued in this direction, at first for 
about one minute. It should then be reversed. Instead of 
moving the hand from left to right, the hand should begin 
at the right and gradually move up and over towards the 
left and then press down and inward near the groin. This 
massage should not be too vigorous. 

If only a small amount of water can be retained at 
one time, then no attempt should be made to hold a large 
amount. In such a case, however, the entire contents of 
the bowel will rarely be eliminated at once. Therefore, 


92 


this process should be repeated two or three times and 
though a small amount of water is held, yet an effort should 
be made to retain it for two or three minutes at a time. 

Another method of taking the internal bath is to lie 
on the left side and inject the water into the colon while 
in this position. The right hand should be used in this 
case to help the water rise up through the left side and 
to bring it around to the right side and then down to 
the beginning of the ascending colon. 

In other words, the massage is repeated exactly as 
before but the patient lies on the left side instead of sit¬ 
ting upright on the stool. As soon as it is thought that 
the water has been brought around to the right side, the 
patient should turn and lie on his right side and use the 
left hand to massage the abdomen, this time massaging 
from right to left. Sometimes, a very small amount of 
water held for about five minutes while lying in these 
positions, will suffice if the body is gently massaged and 
stimulated thoroughly during this time. 

This maneuver however, may have to be repeated two 
or three times to get all the waste material out of the 
bowel. The first time, five minutes should be taken, the 
second time, about three minutes, and the third time about 
two or three minutes. Occasionally, a single application 
of warm water, especially when an entire quart is used, 
may be sufficient to eliminate practically all the waste ma¬ 
terial and then a second or a third injection of water may 
be unnecessary. 


_ ♦ _ 

For a specially devised apparatus invented by the 
author for the taking of the internal bath and the im¬ 
proved method of internal irrigation, see advertisement at 
the end of book. 


9Z 



FISTULA 

There are many forms of fistula and many parts of 
the body may be affected, but we shall only treat of rectal 
fistula in this article. 

Wherever a fistula may be found, it takes the form 
of a narrow duct or passage which connects with a more 
deeply seated inflammation. In rectal fistula it is a pus- 
filled passage leading to a larger inflamed region in the 
bowel. Physicians will usually advise a surgical operation 
for its removal. Such an operation is however unnecessary 
if a natural cure is resorted to. Both the inflammation 
and the pus-filled passage which forms the fistula itself 
are brought on by chronic constipation which causes in 
turn the inflammation of the bowel and gradually brings 
about a condition so sore that it begins to suppurate and 
pus is formed. We need only remember that such a con¬ 
dition can never result in a clean bowel, to realize what 
the method of cure must be. 

The bowel must be cleansed and kept clean and the 
acid nature of its contents must be lessened. In the be¬ 
ginning, warm or hot enemas or internal irrigation should 
be resorted to. These enemas or irrigations may be ap¬ 
plied in the morning shortly after rising and at night an 
hour before retiring. They should be continued daily 
until a decided improvement is apparent. Besides this 
purely local treatment, the natural bath, exercise and 
general right living must be followed in order that the 
entire system might be strengthened and the blood be made 
strong enough to remove the pus and inflammation from 
the region of the fistula. 

The chief method of cure, however, must be in the 
matter of diet. A strict eliminative diet must be adhered 
to. Meat, fish, chicken, eggs, cheese, beans, peas, lentils, 
white bread, white rice, pearled barley, denatured cereals 
and all canned goods and medicines, alcohol, tea, and coffee 
must be completely done away with for the time being at 
least. The diet must consist largely of raw fruits and raw 


94 


green vegetables with a lesser amount of juicy cooked 
vegetables. A quart of milk may be drunk every day and 
from two to five slices of whole wheat bread may be eaten. 
A handful of nuts or dried fruits may be had occasionally. 
However, every effort must be made to eat meagerly no 
matter how thin the body becomes during the process, be¬ 
cause the blood must be given little else to do aside from 
absorbing and then eliminating the poisons that are present 
in the fistula. 

If this advice is strictly followed and the patient man¬ 
ages to get about a great deal in the open air, a cure is 
certain, though months may be required for its final ac¬ 
complishment. 

PILES AND HEMORRHOIDS 

Piles and hemorrhoids are a stagnant condition of 
the blood in or near the rectum which usually exhibits 
itself in the form of small knots or bunches of swollen 
veins. This is brought on by unusual effort at the stool 
and also by a generally poor circulation of the blood in 
the rest of the body. 

The cause of all these conditions is constipation which 
both slows up the blood stream by filling it with a lot of 
poisons, which the blood can handle only with difficulty, 
and at the same time directly clogs the bowel. The slow¬ 
ness of the circulation, the dryness of the fecal matter 
which is eventually brought about by constipation, the acid 
nature of this material, all tend to strain the end muscles 
of the bowel. This strain brings about a local gathering 
of the blood for the purpose of assisting the muscle. The 
continual gathering of blood in this region gradually en¬ 
larges the local blood vessels. On the other hand, the 
weakness of the general circulation keeps this blood from 
getting back quickly into the blood stream. Stagnation 
results. When this stagnation becomes chronic, the veins 
swell larger and larger and their walls become very thin so 
that the slightest irritation or effort at stool, may cause the 
blood to seep through. The loss of blood occasioned at stool 


95 


tends to weaken the entire body. The constant irritation 
and the self-consciousness that this ailment often produces 
in the victim, tend to injure the nerves greatly. A con¬ 
dition of nervousness is often brought about directly 
through this one cause, although other causes may help 
to aggravate the nervous condition at the same time. 

The natural bath as described in these pages is a great 
aid towards the cure of this ailment. The application of 
a cold pack in the region of the rectum will also be found 
very beneficial. These baths and cold packs should not 
however be overdone. The bath, for instance, should be 
taken for a few minutes only and the region of the rectum 
should be rubbed vigorously during this bath no matter 
how painful it may be. The cold pack can be applied and 
left on for two hours at a time once a day or the patient 
can apply this pack before going to sleep and leave it on 
all night. This latter treatment, however, should not be 
continued for more than two or three nights in succession. 
One or two nights should be permitted to pass before this 
treatment is resumed. If after two or three weeks no im¬ 
provement is discovered, the cold packs should be discon¬ 
tinued. Finally, the only real cure for hemorrhoids and 
piles is to cure the condition of constipation which causes 
the former condition. 

In the article on constipation which will be found in 
another part of this volume, the entire subject is thoroughly 
treated. If the hemorrhoidal patient should desire a quick 
and certain cure, this can be accomplished either by a fast 
of from seven to fourteen days duration or by a fruit fast 
lasting from two weeks to two months. 

If after attempting either of these latter methods, only 
partial cure is achieved, the patient need only continue to 
live properly for a sufficiently long time, which may be a 
matter of months, and a real cure will inevitably be 
arrived at. 


96 


RHEUMATISM 

(Arthritis, Neuritis, Neuralgia, Lumbago etc.) 

Rheumatism is a painful condition that may affect 
any part of the body or practically every part of the body 
at the same time. Usually, however, the name is associated 
with pains in the legs, arms or back. Many other names 
have been given to these pains. For instance in the upper 
leg, this condition is often called sciatica. When these 
pains affect the arms or shoulders or chest, they are usually 
dubbed neuritis, though true neuritis more often affects 
the legs. In the jaw, these pains are known as neuralgia,— 
and near the small of the back, lumbago,—in the joints, 
arthritis,'—in the feet, gout, etc. In the present article we 
shall call all these conditions by the one name,—rheumatism. 

Wherever we may find this ailment, the cause is the 
same, it is due to an excess of acid in the system, chiefly 
of uric acid. It is only necessary to know the cause of 
any condition in order to know how to remove it. In this 
case the cause is very clear and obvious. The excess of 
uric and other acids in the system is due to a diet that 
is heavy with animal proteins. Meat, fish, chicken, eggs 
and cheese, particularly the first four, are urea contain¬ 
ing foods. In the body this urea is resolved into uric acid. 
There are also other acids similar to uric acid in these 
foods and when great quantities of them are consumed, 
an acid condition is gradually created in the body. This 
acid condition may be localized and held to one part of 
the body while the rest is comparatively free of acid. For 
the body is always defending itself against the invasion 
of poisons of every kind and it is as a rule only the weakest 
part that gives way first. Though at times the part which 
is busiest with the effort of eliminating the poisons, is 
first affected by them. 

For present purposes, it is enough to know that rheu¬ 
matism is an acid disease and that practically all modern 
authorities are agreed that this is so. When we also realize 


97 


that the animal proteins are the largest acid makers of all 
the foods we eat, we are nearing a solution of our problem, 
“What is the cause and what is the cure of rheumatism ?’" 

The Acid Making Foods 

Many a physician who has recognized the acid nature 
of the various forms of rheumatism, has warned his patient 
against the use of red meats, evidently looking upon red 
meat as an acid producer. If the same doctor had taken 
the trouble to look into any modern physiology, he would 
have found that all proteins are simply a combination of 
amino-acids. That as soon as meat or fish or chicken or 
eggs enter the body, the process of turning them into acid 
chyle begins and that two or three hours later they are 
completely reduced to this acid form, even in the healthiest 
stomach. 

In fact, blood cannot be made out of these foods until 
this has been done. Now there is nothing very deadly about 
acid chyle or even about uric acid itself. Rheumatism is 
not really a matter of acid in the system but of too much 
acid. A certain amount of uric acid is in fact essential 
to the body in order that the muscles shall be properly 
stimulated to their necessary activity. But the slight 
amount of acid needed for this purpose, is ever present 
in the body and there is never any need for adding more, 
through any special diet. 

On the other hand we do need to exercise care, to 
prevent an excessive amount of acid gathering or forming 
in the body. 

Though it is true that red meat is an acid maker, it is 
likewise just as true that veal is an acid maker, also pork 
and lamb and all varieties of fish, including shell fish. 
Poultry of all kinds and their eggs belong to the same 
category. 

All of these foods belong to the family of animal pro¬ 
teins and while some of them are slightly better or slightly 
worse in the matter of acid production, yet on the whole 
they are practically alike. And if a rheumatic patient is 


98 


to avoid red meat, he must also avoid every other kind 
of meat whether of fish, flesh or fowl,—or the egg of a fowl. 
The egg is after all only the unborn fowl and is made of 
the same material as the fowl which has been hatched 
out of the egg. 

Cheese, (especially the older and more fermented 
types,) also tends to aggravate an acid condition of the 
body. Though a fresh, white cheese such as cottage cheese 
or pure cream cheese or in fact any white fresh cheese, 
is comparatively harmless especially when eaten sparingly. 

It would appear to all sensible people that once know¬ 
ing the cause of rheumatism to be the excessive formation 
of acids in the system, everybody would immediately agree 
on the cure. This should be particularly true of every 
honest practitioner who specializes in this field. This is 
however, far from being the case and the chief reason for 
this is because the average doctor has made hardly any 
study of the diet question. 

In fact, it is only within the last ten years that any 
attention is being paid to diet even in our best medical 
schools. As this is a new subject with them, they have 
not as yet a thorough comprehension of every side of this 
great but simple subject. That is, it is simple when it 
is once understood. Still it is very difficult for the beginner 
to grasp each separate part of it and keep each in its 
separate place and yet see the subject as one unified whole. 

For this reason, many a doctor will tell the rheumatic 
patient not to eat red meat but to eat other kinds of meat, 
which are made of practically the same materials with the 
one exception of pigmentation. In plain words, the only 
difference chemically between the red meat and the white 
meat is in the pigment or color and there is no difference 
whatever in their effect upon the patient unless it is a 
psychological difference. Even worse however, than this 
mistaken view of the doctors is the advice indulged in by 
many of them, to the effect,—that all acid foods must be 
cut out of the diet. This is usually followed by the state¬ 
ment that lemons, oranges, grape-fruit, tomatoes, cucumbers 


99 


and other such vegetables are acid foods and must be 
strictly left out by the patient. 

ARE LEMONS ACID? 

The trouble with this advice is that it seems so plausible 
to most people. A lemon is sour, therefore it is easy to 
understand that it is also an acid. To a lesser extent, the 
grape-fruit, the orange, the cucumber, etc. seem logically 
to belong in the acid group. Not only would the average 
layman be deceived but the practiced chemist knows that 
when a lemon or an orange is squeezed on a piece of litmus 
paper in the laboratory, the paper turns pink which means 
that the reaction is acid. What the chemist forgets and 
what the layman and the doctor fail to realize is that the 
human stomach is a laboratory of its own, changing food 
of every kind into blood and the blood into bone and tissue. 

When a food enters the stomach, its quality may 
change from an acid into a non-acid and from a non-acid 
to an acid. A salt entering the stomach can be neutralized 
or can turn into an acid. An acid entering the stomach 
can be neutralized or turned into a salt,—or it can remain 
an acid,—or can even turn the contents of the stomach as 
a whole, into a neutral or alkaline condition. 

The question that we have to consider is not what 
the lemon etc. is outside of the body but what it is and 
does inside of the body. Luckily these things are very 
well known today and are easily and quickly proven. What 
we know about the lemon and all other so-called acid 
fruits and vegetables, is that their acidity ceases as soon 
as they enter the body. So far from creating acid in the 
system, they help to neutralize any acids that are present 
in the body at the time. They tend to form a neutral 
or even an alkaline condition in the stomach and they are 
directly and immediately helpful in dissolving and diluting 
uric and other acids in the system and help to drive them 
out of the body. 

Instead of being the aggravators of a rheumatic con¬ 
dition, they are Nature's surest agents for the relief and 
the ultimate cure of this condition. 


100 


The fact that many doctors have not yet recognized 
this truth is because they have heard that the lemon, for 
instance, is an acid fruit. They have therefore reasoned 
that, as rheumatism is an acid condition, the removal of 
lemons from the diet would help to cure it. They have 
failed to recognize two important facts in this relation. 
One—as we have already explained, that the lemon and 
all other so-called acid fruits and vegetables are alkaline or 
neutral in the stomach and are solvents and neutralizers of 
the acid condition of the stomach or blood. 

The other side of this question that they have not 
taken into account, is that never, since the first case of 
rheumatism was known to mankind, has there been a 
human being who ate plentifully of raw, fresh fruits, par¬ 
ticularly lemons, oranges, grape-fruit, etc. who suffered 
from rheumatism. Furthermore, there never was a case of 
rheumatism where the sufferer was not a plentiful eater 
of meat or fish or chicken or eggs or cheese or all of these 
foods combined. 

Wine and alcoholic drinks in general have also played 
a part in causing rheumatism. Alcohol destroys tissue 
and directly produces acids. Secondly, the strength of the 
body is used up in its efforts to rid itself of the alcohol. 
The exhaused body is therefore unable to throw off the 
acids that are normally formed in the system. Coffee and 
tea also help to aggravate a rheumatic condition, by caus¬ 
ing the break-down of many of the cells of the body and 
these broken down cells are turned into acids which gradu¬ 
ally accumulate in the system. 

Were it not for the fact that the body as a whole 
is continually laboring to throw off these poisons through 
the bladder, the skin, the bowel, the hair and so forth, 
the entire body would soon be consumed with acids, due 
to the generally wrong diet of the average person today. 

An active, physical worker, especially one who works 
in the open air, can resist the excessive formation of acids 
in his body for a long time. 


101 


The man or woman, however, of sedentary occupation, 
leading a comparatively inactive life and living on rich 
foods, must beware of the acid forming foods. Their lungs 
do not work rapidly enough to expel all the acid produced 
from these foods. Nor do they perspire enough nor 
eliminate sufficiently in other respects, to enable them to 
take care of these acids. 

Rheumatic Medicines 

For thousands of years, people have dosed themselves 
for rheumatism in countless ways. Millions of remedies 
have been devised for its cure or relief and many of these 
remedies, especially the more modern ones, actually suc¬ 
ceed in affording some relief at least for a while. This 
relief is usually accomplished by paralyzing the sensory 
nerves, so while the acid remains in the body the nerves are 
unable to tell the brain about it. In this way the trouble 
continues and grows worse. The patient however hides 
this fact from himself by again and again poisoning the 
nerves whenever they attempt to transmit the message that 
something is wrong. 

Pain is only a message that something is out of order 
and requires repair. No permanent cure or benefit can be 
derived from stifling this message while the cause of the 
trouble is permitted to continue. Even if we knew of a 
medicine or some artificial method which would instantly 
throw all the uric acid out of the body as soon as it is 
formed, still whenever we ate the acid making foods we 
would have a new supply and we would be dependent 
upon these remedies forever. 

It can likewise be easily understood that no remedy 
of whatever nature continues to work long, while the 
cause of the trouble continues. A medicine which relieves 
a condition for a while, soon ceases to relieve that condi¬ 
tion and a new medicine must be resorted to. Each new 
medicine must be a stronger and still a stronger one. The 
power of the body to endure such treatment is exhausted. 
Finally, no medicine works at all and the patient is left to 
despair, or dies of the treatment. 


102 


To rub in a salve or a so-called ointment, or to apply 
some powerful poisonous plaster or a substance of any 
kind to the body, in the hope of drawing out the poison 
in this manner, is to commit the greatest of follies. There 
is no medicine capable of drawing poison out of the body 
nor wdll cupping or electrical methods succeed in doing so. 
Any and all of these methods in one way or another, 
succeed in paralyzing the nerves in the region where they 
are applied. By such means, a temporary let-up in the 
activity of these nerves may be had. It may be days or 
weeks before they will again protest painfully against the 
acid bath to which they are subjected. 

After any severe attack, whether a medicine is or is 
not used, there is usually a period of quiet or compara¬ 
tive quiet. During this truce the body’s forces may again 
be gathered in a strenuous effort to expel these poisons 
through their normal channels. 

If these efforts succeed, the local pain may disappear 
because the acids have been temporarily removed from that 
region. Or it may be that the body is too weak to protest 
and the nerves endure their bath of acid to which they 
gradually grow' accustomed. This continues until a still 
greater supply of acids enters the region in question and 
then there is a new protest and as a rule a new application 
of poisons or paralyzing methods from the outside, and 
again there is quiet for a while. 

It does not matter whether medicine is applied to the 
outside of the body, whether it is rubbed in vigorously or 
simply laid on, whether this medicine takes the form of 
creosote combined with other drugs in a so-called ointment 
or a mustard plaster or alcohol, or whether these medicines 
Or others are taken internally or simply poured into the 
bath. They are all effective in making the condition worse 
eventually by hastening the breakdown of all the powers 
of the body. All medicine is poison of one kind or another 
and so the body is forced to fight not only the ordinary 
food poisons, from which it is already suffering, but also 


103 


the drug poisons which are applied for the purpose of 
fighting the food poisons. 

Medical Antidotes 

While it is true that poison must sometimes be used 
for the purpose of fighting poison, yet this is only true 
in an emergency when some drug-poison has been swal¬ 
lowed. Even in such cases the remedy does not always 
work. In any case the patient would rarely care to go 
through a second experience of this kind. Were it to 
happen again and again, no antidote would be sufficient 
to save him. 

Every time the body is called upon to arbitrate in 
the struggle between the poison already in the body and 
the medicine flung in after it, the arbitrator gets the worst 
of it. For in this case the battle is conducted inside of 
the arbitrator and it does not matter who wins,—the scene 
of the battle is a scene of destruction. Medicine cannot 
help to cure rheumatism nor can any other artificial method 
do so. 


The Natural Cure 

There is only one cure and that is to remove the 
chief cause,—the excessive eating of animal proteins and 
to substitute those foods which as has been shown, are 
anti-acid in their effect upon the body, as well as all other 
foods which are normally healthful and nourishing. It is 
of course also necessary to exercise and to get plenty of 
fresh air, >in order to stimulate the lungs and the skin and 
bladder in their efforts to throw off the acids. 

Likewise, natural bathing must be resorted to, and 
the skin must be rubbed vigorously during this bath in 
order to stimulate it in its work. In other words, a more 
natural life must be led, at least for a while. Later, if 
the patient desires, some of the animal proteins can be 
re-introduced into the diet but must always be eaten rather 
sparingly to avoid a recurrence of the rheumatic condition. 


104 


New Medical Discoveries 

It must not be forgotten, as has already been remarked, 
that for thousands of years people have been trying to 
discover a remedy for rheumatism while continuing to 
live on the acid making foods and that thus far there are 
thousands of alleged remedies but not a single cure. Let 
not the poor sufferer from this condition be misled by the 
promises of any wondrous cures in a bottle or a package 
of any kind or through any electrical method or marvelous 
baths or some wonder-working salve or ointment or any 
so-called “new” and miraculous cures. The world is full 
of such cures and each locality has its own special methods. 
Each doctor has his own inventions and each day has its 
new discoveries in this field. 

As long, however, as people will continue to lead in¬ 
active indoor lives and eat powerful, acid making foods, 
they will find themselves forever seeking a cure and for¬ 
ever suffering from acid conditions of all kinds. The natural 
cure may of course not be so appealing as other so-called 
“cures” and for the rheumatic sufferer, the flesh-pot may 
have a tremendous lure. This is only because like the 
dope fiend or the alcoholic victim, he longs for the sting 
of the whip to which he has grown accustomed. Like the 
drug fiend, he depends upon this poison which has become 
his stimulant. He must have a shot of his favorite tipple. 

Just as the normal loses its appeal to those who have 
indulged long in the abnormal, so the simpler, more delicate 
and more wholesome foods lose their flavor to the one who 
has grown fond of strong meats and acid making fish and 
other such foods. But if there is to be a cure, there must 
be a revaluation. The sufferer must recognize the cause 
of his malady and just as a drunkard would hardly expect 
to be cured of alcoholism while he continues to drink copi¬ 
ously, so must the rheumatic sufferer realize the nature of 
the true acid makers, the real cause of his trouble, and 
avoid them until he loses his desire for them. He must 
cultivate the habit of more natural eating until he has 


105 


grown used to it and a natural taste and natural appetite 
replaces the less natural. 

The taste for animal foods especially in great quan¬ 
tities, is a cultivated taste in man. The primeval savage 
from whom through thousands of generations modern man 
has descended, lived on the fruits of the forest alone and 
ate no animal foods whatsoever. It was only later on in 
periods of famine when fruit temporarily failed him that 
he killed animals or even his own fellow human beings 
in order to appease his hunger. He was able to survive 
on such a diet because he led an outdoors existence. 

The meat-eating savage had to be very active at times 
in order to get food. He also had plenty of time for rest. 
He was a creature largely of instinct. He worried little 
and thought even less. The animal food he ate was always 
absolutely fresh and was eaten without much preparation. 
The animals he killed were wild, healthy animals and not 
the weakened and diseased creatures which are slaughtered 
for human consumption in these days of civilization. Modern 
man must choose his diet with care and especially when 
he is crippled with rheumatism must he avoid the diet 
of the fierce and active warriors who inherited the primeval 
wilderness. 


Rheumatism and Wet Weather 

As an afterthought on this question, the rheumatic 
patient must be warned not to look upon his malady as 
one caused by wet weather or by a moist climate or by 
moist surroundings of any kind. For although the presence 
of moisture tends to bring on rheumatic pains, it is only 
because uric acid seems to have an affinity for moisture 
and becomes unusually active when in proximity to water. 
Though this affinity is often more psychological than 
chemical. And so far from the water causing rheumatism, 
the one place in the world where people bathe more than 
anywhere else on this earth, namely Tahiti and the South 
Sea Islands, rheumatism is rarer than elsewhere. 


106 


The continuous bathing and swimming in which the 
natives indulge, and their open air life, tend to dissipate 
the uric acid from their systems. If it were not for their 
desperate and excessive drinking which they have learned 
from the whites who exploit their islands, they would be 
as they were in the past before the coming of their European 
conquerors, practically free from this and all other ailments 
which the European has so kindly conferred upon them. 
Their life with all its former shortcomings would never¬ 
theless be again the barbaric paradise that it was. 

Rheumatic Baths 

In connection with bathing, it must not be forgotten 
that the most popular cures for rheumatism and kindred 
ailments, are the various mineral baths throughout the 
world. These baths are credited with miraculous powers 
and are frequented by hordes of rheumatic sufferers. 

Of course these baths do not cure. Like medicine, 
they may relieve for a while,—but eventually all ailments 
treated in this manner are aggravated and made worse. 
There can be no cure as long as acid-making foods form 
a large part of the patient’s diet. 



107 



KIDNEY TROUBLE 

Disease and weakness of the kidneys and bladder are 
so common that it is rare to find a grown man or woman 
without some trace of these troubles. The commonest of 
the venereal ailments is in fact only a form of kidney 
trouble, although purely local causes may help to bring it 
into an active state. Not only are adults the victims of 
these ailments however, even infants in arms sometimes 
suffer from them, while weakness of the bladder is quite 
common to children. 

When we realize that the kidneys are filters, which 
extract certain poisonous material from the blood which 
they eliminate from the body through the bladder, it should 
not be difficult to understand that these organs may be 
overworked, that they may be forced to eliminate too much 
poison and thus be themselves poisoned in the process. 
This is exactly what happens. Diseases of the kidneys and 
the urinary tract are due to an excess of poisons in the 
bladder. Certain acids, such as phosphoric, sulphuric and 
uric acids are chiefly responsible for injury to the kidneys. 
These acids are largely produced by the eating of too much 
of the animal proteins. 

Whatever may be said for or against the eating of 
meat, fish, chicken and eggs and the drinking of coffee 
and alcoholic beverages, one fact remains. All these over¬ 
load the kidneys with poisonous material which they are 
forced to handle, in order to save the rest of the body 
from being attacked by them. Phosphoric, sulphuric and 
uric acid are directly contained in meat and other flesh 
foods. The body must make some disposition of these 
acids and the kidneys are called upon to do this work. 

If the body were kept very active and constantly in 
the open air, the kidneys would be stimulated and aided 
greatly in this work. At the same time, the lungs and 
the skin would take up a part of the burden in throwing 
out these poisons and not leave so much work for the 


108 


kidneys. As this is rarely the case however, the kidneys 
do their best to handle this overload and endure it as long 
as they can, but eventually a more or less severe break¬ 
down is produced. 



View of the Kidneys, Ureters, and Bladder. 

To attempt to treat this condition with medicine, is 
only to make matters worse, as the kidneys are forced to 

109 













handle the medicine, besides all the other poison that has 
been thrust into them. The weakening of the kidneys causes 
a great deal of the poisons which should be eliminated by 
them, to be thrown back again into the blood stream. The 
blood then attempts to throw these poisons out through 
the lungs, skin, bowel, and so forth. When this cannot 
be done, these poisons lodge in various parts of the body, 
where they are stored up until an opportune moment en¬ 
ables the body to throw them out. The results of the 
storage of these poisons in various parts of the body is 
rheumatism, arthritis, lumbago, neuritis, neuralgia, gout, etc. 

There is but one cure for kidney trouble, and its re¬ 
sults, and that is a more natural diet, particularly less 
animal foods, also exercise, long walks, deep breathing, 
natural bathing, etc. The cure of kidney trouble is not 
to be accomplished in a day however, it is often a very 
slow affair. A year or two may even be required before 
a complete cure is effected, but no fear need be felt what¬ 
ever, of these ailments, so long as a natural life is ad¬ 
hered to. 

Nature never fails to cure, where a cure is at all pos¬ 
sible. It may also be said that a cure is always possible, 
except in extreme old age or devitalization, or where a 
surgical operation has so interfered with the functioning 
of certain organs that they have lost the power to act 
for themselves. 


BRIGHTS DISEASE 

Bright’s disease has a dread meaning for the majority 
of people. It is usually looked upon as hopeless, and doc¬ 
tors will often say that there is no cure whatever for this 
disease. It evidences itself both in acute and chronic form. 
It is in reality an inflammation of the kidneys which im¬ 
pedes and arrests the secretion of the urine. In very seri¬ 
ous cases the blood may be directly poisoned by the urea. 
The basic cause of Bright’s disease is an excessive diet of 
animal foods, aggravated by frequent colds, also various 
diseases, such as typhus, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, etc. 


110 



The drinking of alcohol, coffee, tea,—and the use of medi¬ 
cines, also helps to bring on this affliction. 

There should be no fear of this disease being incurs 
able. A diet of raw fruits and light green vegetables, both 
raw and cooked, will tend to neutralize the poisons which 
inflame the kidneys and bring about this condition. 

The fear and the hopelessness that sometimes afflict 
the sufferer from this ailment helps greatly to aggravate 
it and to prevent a cure. For this reason every effort must 
be made not to worry and not to exaggerate the so-called 
.seriousness of this affliction. Two or three months of 
correct living, especially with regard to diet, will make 
a great difference, and within a year at most, a complete 
and permanent cure should be accomplished. 

_ ♦ _ 

KIDNEY AND BLADDER STONES 

These are deposits of lime salts that gradually ac¬ 
cumulate and form either a small gravel or sediment or 
in more severe cases, an actual stone which may vary from 
the size of a pea to that of a small nut. 

During the formation of the gravel or stones, there 
may be very little discomfort and practically no pain. Later 
on, however (varying in different individuals) pains arise 
near the groin and lower back and become almost unen¬ 
durable. Physicians will nearly always advise an opera¬ 
tion when the pain has reached such a stage. However, 
a cure may be accomplished without an operation and it 
need only take a few days to thoroughly test its possi¬ 
bilities. 

The patient should cease to eat all food and should 
drink great quantities of water in which a little lemon 
juice has been mixed. The region of the kidney and bladder 
should be gently massaged by the patient himself or by a 
trained masseur. It is best, however, if the patient conducts 
all his own treatment, as in this way he is directly striving 
for a cure, and the consciousness of his own efforts is very 
helpful in all sickness. An internal bath should be ad¬ 
ministered two or three times a day. This will tend to 


111 




wash all waste material and slime out of the bowel and 
thus will stimulate the excretion of waste material from 
the blood into the bowel. 

In most cases, only a few hours will be required to 
obtain relief. In some cases, however, a day or two may 
go by, before the pains have subsided to any extent, but 
the patient must endure the pain to the best of his ability, 
for relief and a cure are bound to come before long. Cases 
have been known where the victim of such a condition 
waited five or six days before the stone was finally ejected. 

Even if it took a great deal longer than this it would 
be worth while waiting in order to avoid the danger and 
injury of a surgical operation. 

To sum up both the cause and cure of kidney and 
bladder stones, it is only necessary to read the preceding 
article on kidney trouble. Inflammation of the kidneys, 
due to overwork, is responsible for their failure to properly 
eliminate or dissolve the lime salts which form the stones 
or gravel. The filtering power of the kidneys is greatly 
weakened by an excessive eating of animal foods, the use 
of coffee, tea, alcohol and also medicines of all kinds. As 
has already been mentioned in previous articles, prac¬ 
tically all medicines must be eliminated by the kidneys 
and they are injured by the passage of drugs, a task for 
which they were never intended by nature. 

The reason why water and lemon juice are used for 
this purpose is because the natural citric acid in a lemon 
tends to neutralize the unnatural acids in the blood. The 
water helps to thin the rich, acid filled blood and to quicken 
elimination from the kidneys and bladder. 

When the first indications of these ailments arrive, 
a diet of raw fruits, and raw vegetables will give relief 
and even accomplish a cure in a few days or weeks. In 
an acute condition, however, the water and lemon juice 
treatment must be resorted to. The following cold-pack 
should also be applied. A towel soaked in cold water 
should be wrapped around the body in the region of the 
kidneys and bladder, with another wet towel placed under 
the lower back and reaching between the legs over the 

112 


pelvic region and up to the abdomen. This will greatly 
help to relieve internal inflammation by alternately cooling 
and stimulating the blood. These packs should be applied 
and left on the body for two hours at a time, and may be 
applied for four or five two-hour periods each day. 

Combined with the methods mentioned at the begin¬ 
ning of this article, some relief should soon be obtained. 

Given a fair chance, nature never fails to cure. 

_ ♦ _ 

APPENDICITIS 
The Function of the Appendix 

If one will examine the position of the appendix in 
the body, its purpose should soon become apparent. In 
any chart of the intestines, it will be readily noted that 
the appendix is placed at the beginning of the large in¬ 
testine. Right here is the spot where the waste material 
from the small intestine and the waste material from the 
blood enters the bowel. A valve is placed here that opens 
to admit the waste material from the small intestine and 
to keep the waste material from getting back from the large, 
into the small intestine. The appendix is placed right 
outside of this valve known as the illeocecal valve. 

The appendix is known as a lymphatic organ. Its 
work, like the work of all lymph in the body, is to neutralize 
waste materials in the blood. Surely, at this point in the 
body there is sufficient waste material to be neutralized, 
not only directly in the blood but also in and near the 
lining of the bowel into which some poison constantly 
seeps when a condition of constipation is present. Let it 
also be understood that some degree of constipation exists 
in all who have not at least two thorough bowel evacua¬ 
tions each day. 

Aside from neutralizing poisons in the blood, the work 
of the appendix is also considered by many able physicians 
of the modern school, to consist of aiding in the lubrication 
of the valve with which it is so closely related. As if to 


113 



prove the importance and the necessity of the appendix at j 
the very spot where it is located in the body, nature forms 
new lymphatic tissue there, just as soon as the appendix , 
is forcibly removed by the knife. 

It might be argued by some that as long as new 
lymphatic tissue is formed, it does not matter whether it 
is removed or not. This reasoning might be very plausible 
if it were desirable to plunge a knife into the body at 
every opportunity, just so long as the cut healed up. If 
it is argued that as long as death does not result in the 
majority of cases where the appendix is removed, no great ^ 
outcry should be made against this removal, the same thing 
may be said of the removal of an arm, a leg, an eye, an ear, j 
or any other part of the body which might be removed ;■ 
without causing immediate death. 

The final argument of those who believe in appendec- ^ 
tomy, is that even if an operation is not desirable, it is ! 
justified by the fact that it is dangerous to permit this | 
organ to remain once it has begun to ache or pain. If j 
the same reasoning should be applied to all other parts 5 
of the body, then rheumatic or neuritis pains in the legs j 
should cause the legs to be cut off. Lumbago should cause i 
a part of the back to be removed and a headache | 
should almost certainly call for the removal of the head. 


The fact is that an appendicitis operation is only neces"^ 
sary for those who believe in it. 



For millions of years, the human race has gotten along 
without such operations until a Boston physician originated' 
them about thirty-five years ago. Before that time, not 
a single such operation was performed. Nowadays, over 
five hundred thousand operations of this kind are performed 
each year in the United States alone. Will anyone claim^ 
that these five hundred thousand and more who are thus 
carved up each year would have died without such 
operation? Not even the most rabid of surgical enthusias 
would make such a statement in the public prints. It m* 
be said and it can easily be proven, that just as mar 
people die today as a result of appendicitis operations : 
ever died before these operations were performed. 


114 





How to Treat Appendicitis 

For those who would like to know of natural methods 
of relief of appendicitis, the following should be recom¬ 
mended. 

Plain hot water should be injected into the bowel by 
means of a fountain syringe and the entire bowel should 
be washed clean of all filth. Full directions for the adminis¬ 
tration of such an enema is given under the article on in¬ 
ternal bathing. This hot water wash should be repeated 
again and again until practically all the mucous and slime 
gathered in the large intestine have been entirely washed 
out. The region of the appendix which is close to the right 
hip, should be at first gently massaged with the bare hand 
which has been dipped in cool water. As the massage 
begins to take effect, it can be made a little more vigorous 
but not too much so. A cold, wet towel should then be 
applied over the entire abdomen. This towel should be 
left on for about twenty minutes and then soaked anew 
in cold water and again placed over the abdomen. This 
should be continued for three or four hours unless some 
relief is obtained sooner. If some relief is obtained more 
quickly, the towel should be applied and left on for a full 
two hours. If relief is not obtained, another enema should 
be administered after two or three hours. 

An effort should be made by the patient to retain from 
half a pint to a pint of warm water in the intestine while 
lying in bed. This water should be retained if possible 
for two or three hours. 

While the bowel and the abdominal region are being 
treated in this manner, the entire body should be sponged 
off with plain cold water which should be permitted to 
dry on the body without the use of a towel for this pur¬ 
pose. Warm water should be drunk by the patient, half 
a glass at a time at five minute intervals. A lemon squeezed 
into the water in the proportion of one lemon to every 
four glasses of water will prove very beneficial in assisting 
the water to cool the blood, to neutralize its acidity, and 
to help to wash waste material from the stomach and 

115 


small intestine into the bowel. Waste matter or fermented 
food retained in the stomach or small intestine will delay 
relief of appendicitis and may prove very dangerous. The 
water and lemon juice and the occasional massage of the 
region of the appendix, will help to remove this danger. 
From six to twelve glasses of warm water may be drunk 
in a period that may range from one to two hours. Pre¬ 
ciseness in this matter is not very necessary. Either more 
or less water can be drunk during this time. The patient’s 
wishes should be followed in this case to some extent at 
least. 

Massage of the abdomen should never be continued for 
more than five or ten minutes at a time. If the massage 
does not soothe the pain a little, while it is being ad¬ 
ministered, it should be lessened after one or two attempts 
and should only be continued for one or two minutes at 
a time. One or two massage periods an hour are suffi¬ 
cient in all cases. The best individual to perform this 
massage is none other than the patient. The feeling that 
one is doing something to help towards a cure is very 
beneficial. 

While the patient is lying in bed, the body should be 
either entirely uncovered to the air or only a light sheet 
should be used as cover. The windows should be at least 
a little open even in the dead of winter. Fresh air is very 
essential in assisting the body back to health. It is in¬ 
vigorating beyond any other tonic. In many cases of ill¬ 
ness, simple exposure of the body to fresh air and sun¬ 
shine (within moderate and sensible limits) has often been 
found sufficient to completely relieve aches or pains and 
to help enormously in bringing about a total cure. 

No food whatever, not even a drop of milk, should 
enter the patient’s mouth, and no beverage aside from that 
outlined above should be swallowed for at least twenty- 
four hours after the attack first evidences itself. After 
twenty-four hours have passed and all aches and pains 
have subsided greatly or have entirely disappeared, the 
extreme fruit fast advised in the article on diet in these 
pages should be adhered to for at least two more days. 

116 


The moderate fruit fast should then be followed for 
one or two more days. The fruit and milk diet should 
then be used for one or two days. In this latter diet, the 
milk may be diminished to a total of one quart a day. If 
the patient continues to feel well, another quart can be 
added the second day and a third quart the third day. 

By this time, all danger of a recurrence of the attack 
should be gone and a moderate, sensible diet such as will 
be found under the Summer Menus for instance, can then 
be followed for a week or two. After this, the individual 
in question will have to govern himself in the matter of 
diet by the general dietary laws advised in the article en¬ 
titled The Diet Question. 

If the directions that have been outlined for the relief 
of appendicitis are followed, the patient should be enabled 
to get out of the sick-bed within one or two days at most 
and to remain out of the sick bed thereafter. 

If however, a recurrence of the pain should ensue, the 
same treatment must be repeated. Such a course will how¬ 
ever be unnecessary except in those cases where the 
psychology of the patient is a very fearsome one. The 
fear of an attack, in other words, may help in bringing it 
on, more than any other factor. It may be said, however, 
that such a recurrence happens in only one out of ten or 
twenty cases. 

Whatever treatment is followed, it should be under¬ 
stood must be modified by common sense. In fact, the 
most important thing that can be said in connection with 
appendicitis, is that the fear that is usually associated with 
this condition must be gotten rid of first of all. The panic 
that such an attack usually brings on in the mind of the 
patient and all those around him, is the hardest factor of 
all to contend with and is the most responsible one, in 
cases where the attack is violently prolonged for more than 
two or three hours. 

Do not be afraid. Forget the surgical bugaboo. Pro¬ 
ceed methodically to relieve the bowel of its waste material. 
Take away the poisons which are overworking and inflam¬ 
ing the appendix and it will again function properly and 

117 


all pains and aches will disappear. The effect cannot re¬ 
main when the cause is removed. 

Finally, it should be remembered that right living on 
the whole is essential in both preventing an attack of ap¬ 
pendicitis and in permanently curing such a condition. 

, . ■ »_ 

HERNIA AND RUPTURE 

Rupture can occur in any part of the body, while hernia 
is a rupture in the abdominal or in the inguinal region. 
In nearly all cases where a rupture has occurred, a tendency 
towards rupture existed previously. A weak, flabby, ab¬ 
dominal wall and a weak groin, make a rupture possible 
by permitting the intestine to break through the muscles 
which are supposed to hold it in place. Falling or leap¬ 
ing or the lifting of a heavy weight or even coughing or 
sneezing, may tend to bring on a rupture, and a person 
with a tendency to rupture who will avoid any strenuous 
movement whatever, may nevertheless cough or sneeze 
violently and thus bring on this condition. 

There is no escape from it aside from building up the 
region by exercise and activity and also by special .baths 
and massage during the bath. The same methods which 
will prevent the occurrence of hernia will also be found 
effective in curing it. 

The abdominal exercises shown in this volume are 
specially adapted to the building up of the entire 
region in question. Aside from these exercises, the natural 
bath will be found very effective in assisting towards a 
cure. It should be taken daily but the patient should not 
overdo it. Five minutes in the bath will be found fully 
sufficient for both cleansing and healing purposes. 

As constipation causes the distension of the intestines 
and consequent pressure on the abdominal wall, this con¬ 
dition must also be completely cleared up before a real 
cure can be had. 

The prevention of hernia can be accomplished through 
the exercises alone but a cure can only be had by curing 
constipation through correct diet, etc., and natural bathing, 
sufficient sleep and special exercises. 

118 



VARICOSE VEINS 

Varicose veins are usually found in people who stand 
a great deal. They are due to a stagnant condition of the 
blood which is produced when standing excessively, be¬ 
cause the blood is drawn down into the legs but is not 
sent back again fast enough to create a proper circulation. 
This can never happen in walking or running, as the ac¬ 
tivity of the legs at such times forces the blood back to 
the heart and through the rest of the body. 

The circulation of the blood is generally a little poorer 
as it reaches the extremities. It is only the activity of 
the hands and feet for at least a part of each day which 
enables the blood to get back properly from the extremities. 
In standing for eight or nine hours a day almost in one 
spot, the blood is drawn down, both by the pull of gravita¬ 
tion and by the action of the general circulation. The pull 
of gravitation however, does not help the blood to go up 
into the body again, and as the general circulation is poor 
in the majority of people, especially indoor workers who 
stand all day, the veins are forced to hold a great deal 
more blood than they are normally intended for. The 
result is a swelling of the veins, which may finally protrude 
to such an extent in the legs as to seem like great purple 
welts that have been administered with a whip. 

To prevent such a condition, clerks and others who 
must stand all day, should whenever possible, get up on 
their toes and back on their heels a number of times in 
succession, stirring up the blood in the feet. They should 
also bend the knees at least a little and straighten them 
out again a number of times during the day. Another 
good exercise is to stand on one foot and then on the other, 
changing feet frequently. Finally they should move about 
as much as they can while at their work, even if they move 
only a step at a time. 

Long walks at the end of the day and in the morning 
will both help to prevent and to cure this condition. A 
general system of exercise indulged in daily for at least 
fifteen or twenty minutes before an open window, and 
the natural bath as described in these pages, will prove 

119 


very helpful in this condition. Finally, it must be remem¬ 
bered that wrong diet, by polluting the blood stream, clogs 
the blood vessels and prevents proper circulation. Proper 
diet will therefore greatly assist in curing this swollen 
condition of the veins. 

The foods most responsible for this condition are, 
meat, fish, chicken, eggs and cheese; also coffee, tea and 
alcohol drinking. Consuming less of these foods and bever¬ 
ages or none at all for a while, will greatly expedite the 
cure. 

A surgical operation can provide relief for this condi¬ 
tion temporarily but only at the expense of the general 
health. Eventually, the new veins and blood vessels that 
are called upon to take up the work of those that have 
been removed by the knife, become swollen and the vari¬ 
cose condition is reproduced. As long as the blood is 
allowed to stagnate in the limbs either through sitting a 
great deal or standing too much, especially the latter, no 
surgical cure can be had for this condition. 

Natural methods can at first counteract the tendency 
to stagnation and ultimately reduce the swollen veins 
which result from it. 


FOOT TROUBLE 

Foot trouble has only two causes,—the wearing of 
tight and unscientific shoes and insufficient exercise of the 
feet. Standing cannot be considered as an exercise. Walk¬ 
ing about in an office or home or in a store can hardly be 
considered as of much value to the feet. As in all indoor 
walking, the feet are made to perspire excessively while 
at the same time getting really but little all-around activity. 

Nature intended man to walk up hill and down dale, 
on even and on uneven surfaces. For this reason, man 
was given pliable feet which bend in every direction. When 
all the muscles of the feet are not properly exercised, their 
flexibility and strength decreases. Ultimately, the muscles 
supporting the arch of the foot may become so weakened 

120 


by lack of all-around exercise, that the bony framework 
that we call the arch, will gradually lose its muscular 
support and will sag down until it becomes almost per¬ 
fectly flat. 

The wearing of arch supports for the purpose of cur¬ 
ing this condition only makes matters worse as the muscles 
supporting the arch get even less exercise than before. The 
foot is turned into a solid clod,—practically all action is 
taken away from it. 

No matter how much one should walk in shoes 
equipped with such supports, the muscles of the feet would 
have little to do. The legs would move, the feet would 
be lifted up and put down again but the muscles of the 
feet would not be called upon to stretch and strain in 
every direction. One might be better off wearing wooden 
clogs instead of shoes as at least the clog is as a rule, so 
made as to expose the feet to the air, not to clamp it in 
tightly. This enables the feet to move around on top of 
the clog. 

In the usual so-called scientific arch support shoe, the 
feet are imprisoned and held tight and permit almost no 
movement at all. The cure for arch troubles and for a 
calloused condition of the sole of the feet and corns and 
bunions, as well, can be accomplished in the following 
manner: 

Soft leather shoes with flexible soles should be worn, 
in which the foot is so loose as to be able to move about 
within the shoe. It must not be laced too tightly. 

Stockings should be changed daily and the feet should 
be bathed every day in plain water which can be cool or 
luke-warm. No foot powders or other preparations must 
be used whatever. For callous, a soft, white rag should 
be placed under the stocking, fresh every second day. For 
corns, a soft, white bandage should be wrapped two or 
three times around the corn and changed daily. The pur¬ 
pose for this cloth application is to soften the corn or 
callous by taking away the irritation which has produced 
it. Rubbing continually against the hard leather or canvas 
surface, even through the thickness of a stocking, will tend 

121 


to bring on corns and bunions, especially when the shoes 
are tight and airless. 

To build up the arch, special foot exercises should be 
done such as rising on the toes, lifting the heels as far as 
possible from the floor and lowering them without touch¬ 
ing the floor. This should be done as many times in suc¬ 
cession as possible within a period of one or two minutes 
each day. A second exercise is to point the toes downward, 
raising one foot off the floor while holding on to a chair 
with one hand. The foot should be pointed down as far 
as it will go, and then brought back as far as it will go up 
towards the shin and then brought down again. This ex¬ 
ercise should be done for about two minutes each day. 

Another exercise that can be done in stocking feet, 
which is also very beneficial for the ankles, is to stand, 
feet close together and turn the soles of the feet towards 
each other so that the feet will be resting on their outer 
sides. Then the outer sides might be raised so that the 
feet face in opposite directions and the ankles are turned 
inward towards the floor. 

Another good exercise is to walk around the room on 
the toes, bringing the heels down only when the toes are 
too tired to hold the feet up any longer. This exercise can 
be kept up for five minutes at a time and will be found 
greatly beneficial in building up the arches and strengthen¬ 
ing the entire foot and leg. 

Lastly, one who suffers from weak arches should make 
every effort to walk gradually increasing distances until 
five or ten miles are covered each day. When it is possible 
to walk such a distance and when the walk is accomplished 
in the right kind of shoes, the arches will be strong enough 
for all practical purposes and little direct attention need 
be paid them in the future. 

It may be said in conclusion, that very few cases of 
foot trouble can resist the treatment that has been outlined 
in this little article. No matter if one may have worn arch 
supports or otherwise mistreated the feet, complete relief 
from all foot troubles can be obtained by these methods 
within a few months at most. 

122 


NERVOUSNESS 


The condition of the nerves Avhich is commonly spoken 
of as nervousness usually has both a mental and a physical 



The Nervous System. 

123 


basis. Although apparently strong and healthy people 
may display the various symptoms associated with “nerves” 
yet if we probe deep enough, we will find in practically 
every case physical weaknesses and derangements which 
often without the knowledge of the victim, have helped to 
bring on this condition. 

In men, bladder trouble, kidney trouble, and chronic 
constipation and indigestion are the greatest causes of 
nervousness. Although these causes are usually aggravated 
greatly by mental difficulties. For instance, financial or 
economic problems, and domestic problems, may suddenly 
become acute at the very time when these ailments are 
in their worst stage and the patient, harrassed on all sides 
by mental and physical difficulties will tend to become 
irritable and would magnify every little trouble that may 
come along to such proportions that life itself may hardly 
seem to be worth while. 

Fears of the future usually assail the victim at this 
time and especially when he is aware that he is 
suffering from a sexual ailment, a sense of hopelessness 
and inferiority may set in and this makes a cure still 
harder, until before this period has passed, the nerves of 
the patient may be quite unstrung and for many years 
after if the patient does not thoroughly take himself in 
hand the nervous condition will persist and may even grow 
worse. 

Nervousness in Women 

In women, on the other hand, financial or economic 
difficulties are less potent to create a nervous condition, but 
domestic difficulties and an imperfect marital relationship 
or the postponement of marriage until the passing of youth, 
or the failure to marry at all will often tend to bring on 
a more or less severe nervous condition. For instance, a 
woman whose married life is unhappy, especially when 
she is ill-mated or when the marital relationship is im¬ 
moderate or unnatural, when there are no children or when 
the children come they are not nursed by the mother but 
are brought up artificially. In all these cases a condition 


124 


of nervousness may arise and many patients may be utterly 
puzzled at times to find the reason for their condition. 
They do not realize that it is impossible to break the 
natural laws in any way and not to suffer as a result. 

Nature ordained a happy marriage for the majority of 
women. It also insists on children as the normal result 
of marriage and furthermore that these children shall suckle 
at the mother’s breast until the time for weaning has 
arrived. This time is evidenced by the formation of teeth 
in the mouth of the child which prepare it for a more solid 
diet. A mother, nursing her child with the aid of a bottle 
filled with cow’s milk, may think she is naturally nourish¬ 
ing her child but the inward call upon her breast, the neces¬ 
sity for the normal development and function of the mam¬ 
mary gland remains and the thwarting of this innate need 
for suckling the child is invariably productive of a more 
or less acute nervous condition. 

It does not matter what anyone may say regarding 
the ability of any particular woman to suckle her child. 
It may be accepted as an axiom, that if nature has given 
a woman strength enough to bring a living child into the 
world, it has in nearly every case provided her with the 
power to nourish that child. Picture for instance, a savage 
woman who had brought a child into the world and was 
unable to suckle it. The child would have surely perished. 
Nowhere in the animal world or in any savage or barbar¬ 
ous community do we find a mother refusing to nurse her 
own offspring. 

It must be remembered that within the mother’s 
womb, the unborn infant is nourished by the 
mother’s blood and that when the child was born and the 
umbilical cord was cut, the power to nourish the child 
did not cease and the necessity to nourish it did not stop 
as proven by the fact that the menstrual flow does not 
begin again for several months. Nature wishes to con¬ 
serve all her forces and so sends this blood into the mam¬ 
mary glands where it is turned into milk for the nourish¬ 
ment of the infant. At the same time, it may be well to 


125 


mention that there is no such thing as rich milk or poor 
milk of an inherent nature. If the mother will only eat 
fairly natural foods especially if she will drink a fair quan¬ 
tity of milk each day and sufficient raw fruits and raw 
vegetables and if the rest of her diet will not be too un¬ 
natural, she need have no fear that her milk will injure 
the child. It may be stated here unalterably, that the 
milk of the weakest mother is preferable to that of the 
healthiest cow or goat or any other animal so far as the 
human infant is concerned. One thing the mother must 
remember however, is not to overeat in the effort to help 
nourish the babe at her breast. Overfeeding will only 
sicken her and thus will help to injure the child. 

We have said a great deal about the nursing mother 
here for the reason that this is a little understood question 
and it has a great bearing upon the nervousness of many 
women of the present day. And not only does the failure 
of a mother to nurse her child produce nervousness but 
it also tends to bring about many derangements of the 
sexual organs, and the mammary glands, which are all 
so intimately bound up with the appearance of the child 
in the world. 

Cancer of the breast for instance, is one of the ailments 
that can often be traced to this cause. However, this is 
only one type of nervousness amongst women. A far 
greater number suffer because they do not become mothers 
at all or because on the other hand, in expressing their 
physiological needs, they have borne so many children 
that they find it impossible to properly care for their en¬ 
tire flock, particularly where poverty exists. The burden 
of caring for a large family in cramped quarters and under 
the most difficult and unnatural conditions is destructive 
not only of the nerves of the mother but of the rest of the 
family as well. In olden times and even at the present 
day, where people live on farms and there is plenty of 
room for play and outdoors activity for the entire family 
and where children soon help to do the work of the farm 
and assist in other tasks, the problem of caring for a large 


126 


family is greatly lessened. Otherwise only a comfort¬ 
able income can assure the health and the sound nerve 
condition of the mother of a large family. Though at 
times we find in even the most poverty stricken surround¬ 
ings occasional families of nine or ten or even more where 
the mother, despite the clamor and the filth that may sur¬ 
round her and the work which she does from dawn to 
night, is nevertheless fairly healthy and even happy. Her 
nerves are calm and strong and she seems to have no desire 
whatever to change or improve her condition in any way. 
She feels thoroughly suited to her task and her task seems 
equally suited to her. These are however, only exceptions 
and are due to a lower or a different nervous organization 
from the prevailing run of humanity. 

The dried up, spinster type, the so-called “old maid,” 
is familiar to everyone. Her meticulous neatness, her in¬ 
sistence upon the importance of details, and often her hair- 
trigger temper, are proverbial. Though this description 
is not at all true of all unmarried women who have passed 
their twenties. Not only are there many sweet tempered 
and kindly women who have never married but there are 
many for whom there is really no need for marriage, they 
are capable of being completely satisfied with their lot 
without marriage or motherhood, and one should be very 
slow in urging marriage upon any woman who for one 
reason or another has remained a spinster or as they now 
sometimes prefer to be called, “bachelor girls.” However, 
when a condition of nervousness sets in, it is often well 
to look the facts in the face and to examine them closely 
and determine whether the fault may not be found some¬ 
where in this direction. Though it is not always possible 
to arrive at a perfect solution of this problem even when 
we have an idea as to its exact nature. The best thing 
to do often in this regard is to forget what cannot be 
helped and to engage in all sorts of healthful activities to 
overcome this drawback. 

Another factor which tends to produce nervousness in 
women, is the unnatural idleness and lack of motive which 


127 


characterize the lives of many women nowadays. Running 
around to parties, gatherings, musicales, theatres, dances 
or traveling, going from place to place, never succeeds in 
satisfying the real inward craving of most women which 
they may or may not recognize, but which nevertheless 
exists. This craving is to rear a child, a daughter or es¬ 
pecially a son who will grow up and do great things in 
the world. 

When a woman can place her heart and soul during the 
best period of her life, from twenty to forty, in raising an 
affectionate daughter or an ambitious son, her deepest in¬ 
stincts are satisfied and there is no desire to flit about from 
place to place or from one interest to another. Provided 
that such a woman is well mated she can be truly said to 
be happy and there is no better tonic for the nerves than 
happiness in liberal doses. Whenever we find a woman 
who has achieved the miracle of motherhood and has even 
succeeded in raising up children to their tenth or even their 
fifteenth year and still continues to gad about in search 
of new sensations, this may be taken as an almost certain 
sign of abnormality. 


SLEEP AND SLEEPLESSNESS 

The lack of sufficient sleep or oversleeping are great 
factors in wearing down the nerves. One need only to test 
this by doing without a night’s sleep or by sleeping only 
a few hours for several nights in succession. No matter 
how strong and robust the individual may be who con¬ 
ducts this experiment, a temporary nervous condition must 
be the result. The eyes will be blood-shot, the hands may 
tremble, and even the knees and feet may shake occasion¬ 
ally, and a great desire for stimulants will be set up, and 
for days after, some of the effects of the sleeplessness will 
remain. 

Sleep is the great refresher of the nervous system. It 
is more essential for the brain and nerves than for the 


128 




muscles or other parts of the body. A person lying in 
bed all night with eyes open and the mind awake will 
succeed largely in resting the muscles which will do no 
work while the body is stretched out in bed. Nevertheless 
upon getting out of bed the next morning, the whole body 
will be shaky and the muscles will seem to be made either 
of putty or lead. The brain and nerves will be upset as 
well. 

This phenomenon is due to the fact that during sleep 
the brain renews itself and rebuilds any ravages that may 
have been done to the nervous system. No better advice 
can be given to the nervous patient who is suffering from 
sleeplessness or the results of insufficient sleep, than to go 
to the country and rest and sleep. 

For the victim of insomnia however, it is not easy 
to follow the latter bit of advice. In his case the phrase 
“open air exercise and activity” should be added. For the 
trouble with nearly all those who suffer from insomnia 
is that they may do a great deal of mental work or in 
many cases they do not even work hard mentally, but at 
any rate they do no physical work and their muscles have 
no need for lying in bed when night comes. 

There is no crying need for rest and so they refuse 
to rest, they toss and squirm and turn in every direction 
throughout the night in an attempt to get the exercise 
which has been denied them during the day. This is 
especially true of men. Women do not require as much 
exercise as do men; they can be idle to a greater extent 
than men without suffering in proportion. 

Wherever insomnia is found however, a combination 
of exercise, long walks, sufficient sleep and mental activity 
of a constructive nature will be found very beneficial. 
Sleeplessness at night may also be due to oversleeping, 
that is, remaining in bed over-long. The best cure for 
this is to cut down the hours during which one remains in 
bed and real sleep will soon return during the fewer hours 
that are spent in bed. 


129 


Unfinished mental problems may tend to keep an in¬ 
dividual awake because the brain tries to finish its business 
at night when it cannot finish it during the day, but this 
can only be said to be true where the nerves are already 
somewhat deranged. Whatever the cause may be how¬ 
ever, it is best to do all of one’s worrying during the day 
and finish or definitely shelve all problems when the time 
approaches for sleep,—if the nerves are to get their proper 
rest. 

If this cannot be readily done, then every effort must 
be made to tire the brain and the body as thoroughly as 
possible during the day. In other words, be as active as 
you can be during the day without overdoing, and don’t 
evade any problem whatsoever during the day, but try 
and solve it on the spot or get as near to solving it as 
you can. As a result, when bed time arrives, your con¬ 
scious mind will naturally throw off the problem and give 
itself over to the luxury of refreshing sleep. 


CURATIVE BATHING 

The bath should be not only a means towards clean¬ 
liness but also a direct curative effort. Likewise, it should 
be a daily stimulus towards better health and increased 
energy. Nowhere amongst the lower animals, is bathing 
used solely as a means of cleansing the body. The bear 
plunges into the water in the Summer to keep cool. A 
cow or an ox will wallow in the mud to get rid of insect 
parasites. The deer and the moose will do the same thing 
in their forest fastness. A great many animals however, 
bathe directly for energy and the relief of heat and inflam¬ 
mation in the lower parts of the body. A hunted deer 
or rabbit or even a fox will hesitate for a moment in the 
heat of the chase if a puddle or a stream is at hand, to 
moisten and rub their under-parts and then resume their 
flight with renewed vigor. 

Human beings in a savage state, bathe and rub the 
pelvic region before anything else. When wearied after 


130 



a long trek, they plunge into the nearest stream and im¬ 
mediately begin to rub and cleanse their backs and thighs 
before doing anything else. 

Civilized people ordinarily get into the water up to 
their waists and unless they are good swimmers, they 
seem content to stand in the water in this position. If 
they give way to their natural instincts, the very first 
thing they will do is to rub and lave the entire pelvic region. 

The natural bath, as discovered by Adolph Just, is 
based almost entirely on this instinctive reaction, both 
of animals and human beings to water. It is intended not 
only as a cleanser of the skin but as a direct stimulant for 
the entire body. When it is remembered that the organs 
of elimination as well as of reproduction are placed in the 
pelvic region and that the nervous system is so directly 
bound up with the faculty of reproduction, it should be 
easy to realize how a bath which applies itself to the entire 
body, but particularly bases itself on the cleansing and 
stimulation of these parts, should be the best bath of all. 

How to Take the Natural Bath 

Run three or four inches of cool water into the tub. 
Sit in the tub with the knees raised at least a foot or a 
foot and a half above the bottom of the tub. Begin by 
cleansing the toes individually and rubbing them with the 
fingers. Wash the legs by rubbing and massaging briskly 
with the wet hands, dipping the hands again and again into 
the water in the meantime. Splash the water around the 
groin and the anus and rub and massage and stroke briskly 
throughout this region. 

The first time this is done, the treatment should be 
rather gentle. After several such baths taken daily or every 
second day, this may be done much more vigorously. This 
does not mean that one need be very rough. The brisk 
massage of this region will help to strengthen it and 
toughen it. In this way, a tendency to hernia or rupture 
is greatly lessened. Sexual weaknesses are largely or 
wholly removed. Inflammation in this region is entirely 
done away with in a short time. 


131 


When this part of the body has been thoroughly attend¬ 
ed to, the rest of the body should be massaged with the cool 
water and gone over again and again so that in each suc¬ 
cessive time, any waste material that may be clinging to 
the pores will be dissolved and the skin will be stimulated 
to eliminate further waste material. The entire bath should 
however, not take more than about five minutes. 

It can be readily seen that the bather must be very ac¬ 
tive during this bath in order to follow all the directions that 
have been given in this limited period of time. This is 
intended to be the case. The natural bath is an exercise, 
a system of massage, a full bath and a special pelvic bath, all 
combined. If taken in cool water once or twice a day in 
the Summer, it will help to make the Summer heat quite 
bearable. If taken in slightly warmer water in the winter, 
the winter cold will not be nearly as extreme. 

It is a bath, which through its stimulating and invigorat¬ 
ing effect, tones up and hardens the entire body and pre¬ 
pares it to face any and every climatic change, as well as 
the ordinary experience of the day's work and pleasures. In 
many respects, it is a healing and curative bath and is to be 
advised in all illnesses where the patient is at all able to 
get out of bed. One or two such baths followed by the 
drying of the body with the bare hands without the use of 
a towel, and exposure to the open air for five or ten minutes 
afterwards, will prove the most wonderful tonic that can 
be administered. When it is not possible to dry the body 
with the bare hands for lack of time or to move around 
naked in the bath room for five or ten minutes after, the 
good effects of the natural bath will still be very great. 

THE SITZ BATH 

In the Sitz bath, the patient sits in from three to five 
inches of water with the legs suspended out of the water 
by means of a stool upon which the legs rest or else this 
bath is taken in a special tub which is so constructed as to 
permit of being seated with the legs comfortably suspended 
outside of the tub, one side of the tub being cut down for 
this purpose. 


131 


There are many temperatures at which the Sitz bath can 
be taken and each degree of temperature is supposed to 
assist in accomplishing certain definite results. Those who 
advocate the Sitz bath have an entire science associated 
with the methods of taking this bath. 

On the whole, we may say, however, that there is 
nothing that the Sitz bath can accomplish that cannot be 
better accomplished by the natural bath, exactly as it has 
been advised above. 

COLD SHOWER 

This form of bathing has been so widely advocated as 
being both hygienic and stimulating and refreshing both in 
Summer and Winter, that it has become quite a fad with 
great numbers of people. It may be said, however, that 
this fad rarely remains popular with the same individual 
for any great length of time. 

The shock of a cold shower in the Winter is a definite 
blow to the nervous system. It takes a certain amount of 
heroism to get under it at all. The average person shrinks 
from such an ordeal. For health’s sake, however, people are 
prepared to do almost anything, and so they steel’them¬ 
selves to the attack of the cold water showering down upon 
the warm body and even manage to make themselves be¬ 
lieve that they are being benefitted. 

There is no benefit in punishing the body unduly. All 
the stimulation of the cold shower can be achieved equally 
in the natural bath, with the shock removed. It is easier 
to get into two or three or even four inches of cool or 
tepid water than it is to get under the deluge of cold water 
striking everywhere almost at once and giving the skin 
little chance to recover. When the water is brought up 
by the hand to touch any given part of the body and the 
warmth of the hand is applied in vigorous massage to the 
body at the same time, an entirely different effect is 
achieved. 

In the Summer time, on very hot days, a mildly cool 
shower may indeed be refreshing and not at all harmful. 
In Winter, one would do well to avoid the cold shower. 


133 


TURKISH, ROMAN AND RUSSIAN BATHS 

All of these baths originated in ancient times and were 
originally associated with many forms of dissipation and 
practices of the most licentious character. Even as it is 
used today, these baths often follow a night of dissipation. 
Picture the supposed stimulation of the cold plunge, to¬ 
gether with the enervation of the steam room and hot room, 
etc. Intermingled with the varied showers, hose applica¬ 
tions, hot boxes, massage treatments and other ordeals that 
are parts of these baths, the combination tends to exhaust 
the bather to the point where sleep is shortly desirable. For 
this reason, beds are provided so that the victim can sleep 
off the results of this bathing debauch. 

Despite all that has been said however, these baths are 
not altogether harmful when indulged in occasionally. A 
stirring up and dissipation of all the body^s energies is 
even helpful if it is done once or twice a year. A more 
frequent indulgence in this bath however, gradually brings 
about a weakening of the nervous system and ultimately 
helps both in the fixing and cultivation of many bad habits. 

One of the worst aspects of these baths is their utter 
closeness which produces an almost fetid atmosphere in 
which no good whatever can be achieved for the body. 
Hours are spent in this atmosphere and perhaps the entire 
night is spent in a dormitory inhaling the exhalations of 
scores of others in the confines of a comparatively small 
room. People who would never sleep half so closely under 
any other circumstances, seem to think it is perfectly well 
to do so while on the premises of one of these establish¬ 
ments. 


134 


THE DIET QUESTION 

There is no question about which there is a greater 
difference of opinion than the problem of what foods are 
best for man to live on. While some point out the harm¬ 
fulness of a meat diet, others argue that the Asiatic peoples 
who live largely on a vegetarian diet are inferior to the 
white people of Europe and America, who live on a diet 
containing more meat and other flesh foods. 

At the same time it may be pointed out that the diet 
of each individual nation or racial group or even locality, 
differs in many ways from the diet of all others, that the 
food of the Italian differs in many respects from that of 
the Frenchman. The Frenchman eats differently from the 
Russian, the Englishman differs from all the others and 
the various parts of the United States differ from one 
another in their daily food regimen, in fact no two families 
eat exactly alike and we rarely find two individuals in the 
same family who have exactly the same tastes in regard 
to food. 

All this would make it seem that eating is a matter 
of taste and as the health of one community differs but 
little from that of the other, one might say that insofar as 
health is concerned it does not matter what we eat, the 
result will be the same. And yet there is not a single 
element of life which has such an important bearing on 
the health of an individual as well as a nation as the ques¬ 
tion of eating. 

Here it may very pertinently be questioned—“How can 
you reconcile the fact that each community has its dietary 
peculiarities and yet the health of one community in the 
United States for instance does not differ greatly from 
that of other communities in this country? If the South¬ 
erner for instance can get along on corn meal and the 
New Englander prefers white bread, while certain other 
communities prefer rye bread, if some localities subsist 
largely on fish and others prefer pork while still others 
use beef or lamb or poultry or dairy products and the 
health of one group does not differ much from another. 


135 


then what importance can diet have insofar as health is 
concerned?’* 

The truth of the matter is that the disease rate and 
the death rate of the various communities is in each and 
every case far higher than it should be and that the dietetic 
faults in one community, are about as great as will be 
found in any other. The type of these faults and errors 
may differ somewhat in one case from that of another 
but essentially they are largely alike, and the injuries 
caused by these dietetic errors, are reflected more or less 
similarly everywhere. 

Thus, wherever we go throughout the United States, 
we will find tuberculosis, diabetes, cancer, tumors, goiters, 
rheumatism, catarrhal troubles, indigestion, constipation, 
pyorrhea, bladder trouble, kidney trouble, gall stones, high 
blood pressure, heart trouble, etc. In some communities 
we will find more cases of one ailment, in another com¬ 
munity a different malady will be more prevalent. 

Everywhere however under ordinary circumstances, a 
thousand diseases and weaknesses will rage, because every¬ 
where a wrong diet is being followed. The differences in 
this diet will dictate in a general way the differences in the 
types of sickness and disease. 

There is really no question whatever but that diet 
plays a great part in making either for health or disease 
in the individual and it is only necessary for the skeptic 
to experiment by eating a more correct diet or a less correct 
diet than the one to which he is accustomed and the results 
will soon be manifest. 

How to Prove the Harmfulness of Wrong Eating 

Let the eater of white bread eat still more of this 
beloved article of food and also more meat and less of the 
juicy vegetables and fruits and milk and if he was sick 
in the first place he will find himself a great deal worse 
as a result of this deteriorated diet. Let him, on the other 
hand, turn to whole wheat bread instead of white bread 
and eat more raw fruits and the green vegetables and milk 


136 


in place of the meats and the heavier vegetables and he 
will soon find his condition improving and in time if he 
will also lead a natural life in other respects, he will find 
himself quite well. Even if he does not lead a natural life 
in any other respect but that of food, he will find his con¬ 
dition greatly improved. 

The fact that many people in this world manage to 
subsist on a wrong diet and somehow seem to get along 
despite this fact, should not mislead anyone who is ill into 
the belief that he can continue to live on a wrong diet 
and that somehow he will be amongst the favored ones 
who will survive. The truth is that those who live longest 
nowadays and who are healthiest, either consciously or 
unconsciously eat more of the right foods and less of the 
wrong foods. They also, whether consciously or not, man¬ 
age to get more fresh air and to lead more active lives 
and to worry and fret less and to sleep more and eat less 
than their more unfortunate brethren who fall by the way- 
side. 

Even these favored few however, suffer more or less 
throughout their lives from one minor ailment or weakness 
or another. 

It is impossible to trespass the laws of nature, particu¬ 
larly with regard to diet and still maintain all the natural 
faculties at their normal powers, and to the degree that 
we trespass these laws, are we made to suffer. A crime 
may be committed by one man against his fellows and if he 
is not caught he will be punished only by his own thoughts, 
but if a man disobeys the laws of nature, his punishment 
is certain and unfailing. 

When a hearty dinner is eaten, consisting of great 
quantities of meat, fried stuffs, rich soups, artificial desserts 
and falsely stimulating beverages, indigestion may not 
follow immediately but the harm is done nevertheless and 
in some way sooner or later, punishment will come and 
suffering will follow such indulgence. 

Of course, if such a meal is only eaten occasionally 
and the rest of the diet is good or at least fair, then the 


137 


harm will be slight and hardly apparent. Regular indulg¬ 
ence in wrong eating, whether it is wrong selection or 
wrong preparation or combination or overeating, must in¬ 
evitably bring about the deterioration of the various func¬ 
tions of the body. It may be said that real good health is 
absolutely impossible on a diet that is predominantly made 
up of the wrong kinds of food. The question may be 
asked here. How do we know what are the right foods?'' 
‘Where have these foods been given any widespread test 
to show that they work out ultimately and in the long run ?" 
The answer is that these theories of right eating have 
never been widely tested in any given community, but 
that they have been tested over and over again tens of 
thousands of times on the sick, both here and abroad by 
nature-cure practitioners and that there are many sani¬ 
tariums in the United States and in other countries where 
these food theories are applied daily and that they never 
fail to work beneficially. 

Medical Dietetics 

Surely, when theories have been tested in and out of 
sanitariums in every variety and state of sickness and 
disease and have unfailingly benefitted all who have tested 
them, then at least we must conclude that insofar as cur¬ 
ing disease or in building up the sick, these dietetic ideas 
have a great importance. In fact it is so admitted nowa¬ 
days by the majority even of the medical dieticians. 
Although diet is really an utterly new field of thought 
and experiment in the medical world. 

It is only in the last few years that a study of diet 
has been placed on the curriculum of modern medical in¬ 
stitutions. In the past, this question has been completely 
ignored and even to the present day in the great majority 
of hospitals as well as in the private practice of more than 
ninety percent of our physicians, the use of diet in a cure 
of disease is utterly and absolutely neglected. Patients are 
fed meat and potatoes, fried stuffs, tea, coffee, cake, pie 
and ice cream, gelatine, etc. just as they fed themselves at 


138 


home before their wrong eating had put them into a sick 
bed. The doctor tries to perform his cure with drugs in¬ 
stead of with the natural medicines that nature has placed 
in certain of her foods. 

This order of things is however, slowly changing and 
eventually some approach to a true understanding of diet 
will be arrived at even in the most hidebound of the drug 
institutions. At present however, even when the physician 
does apparently know something of diet, he knows it upside 
down. He will advise the patient to eat foods that are 
absolutely destructive to his health and to avoid other 
foods which would be positively curative in their effect. 
This is not done out of spite or a desire to do harm but 
simply through ignorance of this subject which is very 
new to them and therefore difficult to understand. 

It must not be thought however, that the diet question 
should concern only the sick. Those who are apparently 
well, must learn to understand it, if they are to maintain 
their health and especially if they are to improve their 
physical condition so that they may enjoy real health. This 
is a condition utterly different from what the average person 
understands by the word “health."' 

In fact, the genuine article is as different from the 
spurious one which is called by that name today as can 
be readily imagined. True health does not permit of a 
single weakness or an ailment existing in an individual 
even for a single day. In the category of real health no 
person subject to colds or suffering from a catarrh or with 
the slightest weakness of any kind can be included. Of 
course such a condition is hard to understand and will be 
scoffed at by those who have not experienced it. They 
will say that such a state of health is impossible under 
modern conditions. 

Fruits and Berries Are Man's Most Natural Foods 

Nevertheless there are many people today who enjoy 
such good health and their number is growing every day. 
Modern man must learn to study the conditions under 


139 


which he lives and not to abide by them blindly but to 
seek to improve and better them in every way. He must 
live by the aid of his intelligence. 

The savage did not have to do this. He found the 
conditions of his life ready-made for him. Fruit hung on 
the trees, berries clustered on the bushes everywhere, grape 
covered vines climbed the trees, even the ground was 
strewn with berries that grew in the dead grass. Living 
on these foods altogether or to a great extent he kept his 
body healthy, his blood clean, his bowels functioning and 
his kidneys and bladder in perfect shape. 

He did not appease his hunger with pie or denatured 
bread nor his thirst with coffee, tea, or alcohol. Even when 
he ate meat, it was simply prepared from the flesh of 
the fresh killed animal and he ate it only when he was 
ravenously hungry after the hunt. 

Slowly the desire for luxury has obsessed modern man 
and now even the poorest who can find no luxuries in 
their homes or furnishings or in other respects manage to 
eat so-called luxurious foods. It should be learned, that 
the more time spent in preparing a food the worse the 
food. The more effort put into its preparation, the more 
the stomach and the other organs that aid in digestion, 
will have to labor to prepare it anew, before it can be 
turned into blood and tissue. 

The stomach of modern man does not differ much 
from the stomach of his ancestor of hundreds or thousands 
of years ago. It is intended for simple foods, either with¬ 
out any preparation whatsoever or with very little prepara¬ 
tion. 

The foods that are most natural for modern man are 
still the fruits and the berries and nuts, which kept primeval 
man in good health, no matter how he feasted after the 
chase. In fact, these foods are even more necessary to 
modern man than they were to his forebears. For today 
man does not roam at will in the forest nor live the healthy, 
natural, outdoor life of his ancient ancestors, and so the 
meat which may have nourished this ancestor poisons his 
modern descendant. 


140 


Meats as Compared to Fruit 

Meat is intended by nature to be eaten only after the 
hunt when the body has been exercised vigorously in the 
open air, and when every faculty has been used in the effort 
to capture the meat and bring it home to be eaten. Unlike 
fruits and berries, meat, fish and poultry do not hang on 
the branches of trees or on bushes where they can be 
approached at leisure and eaten casually as hunger dic¬ 
tates. Meat is usually placed on four legs, poultry on both 
legs and wings, and fish in the water. An effort must be 
made to catch these living things before they can be used 
as food. 

Such a diet requires an active, open air existence. It 
requires that the legs and arms be used vigorously and 
that the faculties of sight, hearing and smell should be exer¬ 
cised just as vigorously and in a broad way. 

Likewise, in a state of nature, animals do not stand 
still waiting to be milked nor does butter mysteriously 
form itself in the forest camp nor is cream or cheese 
obtained like berries or fruit. Therefore, these foods must 
be eaten sparingly with the exception perhaps of milk, 
which being the simplest of the dairy foods is somehow 
more easily handled by the body. Furthermore, the milk 
of the cow or the goat is very nearly like the milk that 
the human babe suckles while nestling in its mother's arms 
and so milk can be drunk by those who are not active, but 
after the passing of infancy, when the teeth make their 
appearance, milk is no longer as good a food as formerly. 

Nature seems to say, “Drink milk at first exclusively, 
later on as the bulk of your diet, and after a while, only 
as a part of your diet if you drink it at all." The coming 
of the teeth is the first signal that the end of the exclusive 
milk diet is at hand and that preparation is being made for 
a more solid diet. Yet somehow, perhaps because of the 
fact that milk is so good for the infant, and that the body’s 
needs do not change entirely with the advancing years, 
milk still remains a fairly good food, even unto old age. 


14X 


The Curative Diet 

The best foods, however, after infancy has passed, as 
has already been stated, are the fruits and berries, which 
were the diet of man’s earliest ancestors and which tens 
of thousands of experiments have shown to be the best 
foods for returning man from sickness and disease and 
disgust and discouragement, from pessimism, cynicism and 
dullness to a state of pristine health and vigor. The body 
rebuilds itself, cell by cell on these foods, until it gradually 
returns internally and externally to the forms and outlines 
of the beautiful and strong bodies of the ancient fruit 
eating progenitors of modern man. 

A return to a fruit and berry diet and to the drink¬ 
ing of pure water is a return to the sylvan life of the days 
of long ago. The body which has been plagued with all 
sorts of dietetic monstrosities suddenly finds itself receiv¬ 
ing the food elements upon which it subsisted for count¬ 
less ages before the dawn of civilization. 

All the weak and sickly structure of the body as it 
is today is slowly changed into the vivid glowing health 
and vitality which was so common in those prehistoric 
times and which was found prevalent in the savage tribes 
that continued to live in newly discovered countries even 
in historic times. Fruits, berries and to a lesser extent 
even nuts, destroy all growths, tumors and all disease and 
weakness that have gradually accumulated in modern man. 
They refine the body and remove the clouds from the mind. 
They refresh, relieve and regenerate, they wash and they 
clean, they remove all waste materials from the weakened 
body, they are curative to the last degree. 

Anyone who is sick and really desires to be well should 
proceed without hesitation to live exclusively on raw, 
fresh fruit, absolutely unprepared, raw, fresh berries with¬ 
out sweetening or preparation of any kind and plenty of 
fresh water. Add to this diet, sunshine and fresh air, rest, 
sleep and a calm mind, and after a while, long walks and 
exercise to strengthen and build up the body. For all 
those who really seek a cure and who are not so discouraged 

142 


by their failure to find a cure in medicine or surgery or 
in any other field, here is a cure, sure and unfailing. 

When a cure has been accomplished, the lighter vege¬ 
tables, milk, whole wheat bread, and if desired some of the 
heavier vegetables simply and plainly prepared and even 
occasionally a little fresh meat or fish or poultry or eggs 
may be indulged in. If such a rational diet is continued, 
good health may be had throughout a long and successful 
life. 

The Lighter Vegetables 

It may be noticed that light vegetables have been placed 
next on the list of curative foods after fruits, berries and 
nuts. The reason for this is that the light green vegetables 
are only grasses which have been brought to their present 
state of development by man. Originally, these grasses 
grew wild and when the fruits and berries failed the forest 
dweller he resorted to them and he found them palatable 
and nourishing. They are filled with fresh water, they con¬ 
tain many valuable mineral elements aside from sugar and 
other food materials. They are highly cleansing and reviv¬ 
ing in their effect on both the sick and the well. 

There is little that is more healthful than celery or 
lettuce or tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, parsley, asparagus, 
rhubarb, water cress, carrots, etc. Many so-called medical 
tonics are supposedly manufactured from these green 
vegetables, especially celery and rhubarb, but these medical 
preparations contain at best only a part of the nourishing 
and healing qualities of these vegetables, and so they are 
in reality more harmful than good. 

Nature combines in each of her fruits and vegetables 
a number of elements which must go together into the 
body to be of any value. To remove any part of them 
and to prepare them artificially is to destroy their value 
utterly. 

Milk 

Milk is next in the order of valuable and healing foods. 
More will be said about it in the remarks on dairy foods 
in the following pages. 


143 


The Heavier Vegetables 

Next come the heavier vegetables such as potatoes, 
turnips, beans, peas and lentils, which are simply a further 
development of these early grasses or form the roots of 
plants which have been developed by cultivation. These 
are not nearly as good as the lighter vegetables, but in 
small quantities they are not at all harmful to a person 
in good health. 

Grains and Cereals 

The grains and cereals are simply the seeds of grasses, 
though they are highly concentrated foods. If they are 
eaten in lesser quantities than is now the custom and if 
they are left with all of their natural qualities after the 
simplest preparation, they can only be considered as good, 
wholesome foods. They are not at all to be shunned except 
by the person who is acutely ill or suffering from a severe 
chronic disorder. 

In other words, whole wheat bread, cereals prepared 
from whole wheat, brown rice, coarse barley, whole rye 
bread, (which is commonly known as pumpernickel,) un¬ 
bolted corn meal and other simple whole grain products 
are recommended as good food up to a certain point. Each 
individual must determine for himself just how much is 
good for him. 

A hard working man or woman can eat as much as a 
pound a day. Sedentary workers who do not exercise 
vigorously each day, should eat from four to at most eight 
ounces a day. More than this amount may prove clogging 
and dulling as all grains are very nourishing and a weak 
body that is not exercised much does not require much 
nourishing. In such a case too much nourishment means 
overloading the digestive system and taxing the vital organs 
in their effort to throw off the unnecessary food material 
which ferments excessively in the system and thus causes 
trouble all around. 


144 


Dairy Foods 

Next in the order of foods that may be eaten very 
sparingly by a person in good health are the dairy products 
such as cream, butter and cheese. These foods are not 
quite as harmful as meat or fish or poultry, because there 
is very little of actual poisonous material in them. They 
are only harmful because they are denatured. In other 
words, they are only a part of the whole product,—which 
is milk. 

Therefore, while milk is made to rank after the lighter 
vegetables as the next best food to eat or drink, yet butter 
for instance or cream, which are only the fatty parts of 
the milk, are brought way down on the list. They are 
deficient in the mineral elements found in the milk and 
lack the water which is necessary for the proper digestion 
of these foods. Milk contains valuable mineral elements,— 
sugar, water, vitamines and enzymes. Besides these, it 
also contains the fat which goes into the cream and of 
which the butter is almost exclusively made. 

All of these elements in their natural combination 
as they come from the cow in the form of milk are excel¬ 
lent so far as the human stomach is concerned and can 
readily be turned into good healthy tissue if not indulged 
in too freely. But when these elements are left out with 
the exception of the fat, as is largely the case in cream 
and butter, it is no longer a natural combination and so 
cream and butter are prepared foods and not in any sense 
natural foods. 

The digestive system handles them only with difficulty 
and beyond a small amount the body cannot handle these 
foods beneficially. Of course this upsets many an old 
time theory to the effect that cream and butter are excel¬ 
lent for invalids, etc. They are in reality the opposite 
of beneficial especially for the sick. They are creators 
of buteric acid in the system and this acid aggravates 
any acid condition in the body. In this connection, it is 
well to remember that in all sickness we find to a greater 
or lesser extent that an acid condition exists. 


145 


White cheese, on the other hand, is usually made from 
plain milk, even from skim milk which is not overloaded 
with the fatty elements as ordinary milk is often found to 
be. Fresh white cheese would be a fine food were it not 
for the fact that a great deal of the water has been squeezed 
cut of it. It is also partly predigested and is often pre¬ 
pared with rennet, which spoils to some extent its normal 
digestibility. 

As it is, it will do no harm if eaten occasionally and 
sparingly by a person in fairly good health. The more 
predigested cheeses that have been aged in vats however, 
belong to a different category. They are the products of 
excessive, long continued fermentation. Compared to white, 
fresh cheese, they are like old wine compared to grape- 
juice. 

Thus, while grape-juice, when purely and simply manu¬ 
factured out of the pressed grapes, is not at all a bad 
beverage, yet wine, especially when it is old, is a product 
of fermentation. It is highly alcoholic and can only be 
classed as a more or less pleasant poison. Far more like 
vinegar than old wine, the older types of cheese should 
be very rarely indulged in, if at all. 

EGGS AND POULTRY 

Eggs follow on this list, and while many people look 
upon fresh laid eggs as the very last word in health giv¬ 
ing and body building foods, the facts are sadly in vari¬ 
ance with this theory. A hen’s egg is only an unhatched 
chicken. 

It is the embryo of the chicken and even when sterile, 
it is nevertheless made up of all the elements of the future 
hen or rooster, aside from the fact that it lacks life. Surely 
the lack of life does not improve the egg in any conceivable 
way. 

While it is not in every respect as bad a food, especially 
for the sick, as is chicken or other poultry, yet the differ¬ 
ence is not very great. In fact the only difference is that 
fortunate fact in nature, that the embryo or offspring in- 

146 


herits but little of the diseases and weaknesses of the par¬ 
ents. In other words, although the egg is made of the 
same material as the grown up chicken it has not had 
time to fill its body with the food poisons and the waste 
material that we find in the full grown bird. 

It does not matter whether only the white part or the 
yellow part of the egg is eaten. Both are chemically es¬ 
sentially alike. Although the white is usually called al¬ 
buminous and the yolk, nitrogenous, yet these are only 
varied names for protein. Of course the sick and the 
invalid, may fool themselves into believing that raw eggs 
or soft boiled or hard boiled eggs or poached eggs or eggs 
in any other form are a healthful food for them to eat but 
they will suffer from the sad effects of such a belief. 

Having said so much about the egg of the chicken let 
us now turn to the chicken itself and poultry in general. 
For some unexplained reason, perhaps because of the pro¬ 
lific nature of poultry and especially of the chicken so- 
called, and also because of the tastiness of the latter when 
prepared in various ways, it has come to be looked upon 
as a healthful and highly beneficial food for mankind. 

There is little or no basis for this theory however. 
Despite its attractive nature to those who love poultry as 
a food, it is necessary to show that it is not based on fact. 

First of all,—chemically, poultry differs but slightly 
from beef or mutton or even pork. The flavor may be 
different, the appearance may be different, the taste may 
even be different, but the true chemistry of all these foods 
is approximately the same. 

No one would say for instance, that a red cow fur¬ 
nishes better meat than a white cow or a black ox. And 
neither can any sensible person insist that because the 
color of the meat of the chicken differs from the grown 
beef, therefore it is better for that reason than beef. As 
regards flavor and taste, these have to do with individual 
peculiarities both in these various animals and in the per¬ 
son who eats them. They in no wise change the fact that 
chemically all flesh is alike, that the differences are purely 


147 


superficial and do not make one kind of meat better than 
another. 

The only difference that really can be allowed between 
one and the other is when the meat of one animal is much 
fatter than the meat of another or when one animal is in 
better health than the other at the time it is slaughtered. 
Otherwise there is really no difference worth discussing. 
A chicken is a protein animal as well as a cow, an ox, a 
pig or a sheep. 

Enough has now been said about foods in this and 
other articles in this volume to satisfy all who are really 
interested in the truth about this important subject. 

For those who seek exact guidance as to what to eat 
each day,—the following menus are recommended. 

All of the Following are Maximum Menus 

The patient or follower may eat as much less than is 
stated below as is desired. More, however, should rarely 
be eaten. 

When a certain procedure is outlined in the menus, 
it should be observed as carefully as possible. For instance, 
if a menu should state, “1 orange, 1 glass of milk, 1 orange, 
1 glass of milk,”—these foods and beverages should be 
eaten or drunk in the order in which they may be set forth. 

In the preparation of all foods for the table,—little 
or no oil should be used and no vinegar, ketchup or special 
sauces of any kind, and very little of other condiments 
should be added. 

Table salt should be used very sparingly. Spices should 
be applied in minute quantities, if at all. 

Foods should not be creamed or cooked in any very 
fanciful manner. 

There should be a minimum of variety at any one 
meal,—though one meal may vary very widely from another. 

Some raw fruit or vegetable should be eaten at every 
meal. 


148 


H*w to Follow Monus ,4 

Canned Food Should be Avoided as Much as Possible 

When the meat of a fowl is included in the following 
menus, it is not intended as a compulsory article of diet. It 
can be included or left out at will. It is only added to sat¬ 
isfy those who crave a little animal food. Likewise, if any¬ 
one should find fowl once a week insufficient for their needs 
or desires—meat, fish, fowl, eggs or cheese may be eaten 
a little more frequently in small portions without very 
much harm. 

Where chronic ailments or weaknesses are present, 
however, animal foods should be dispensed with altogether 
or nearly so until a cure has been accomplished. 

In the fruit fast, fruit diet, fruit and nut or fruit and 
milk diet, that follow, only sample-menus for from one to 
three days are given. If relief is not obtained in a day or 
two this diet should be continued for as long as may be 
deemed advisable by the patient. One may, for instance, 
begin with the “Extreme Fruit Fast,’’ continue with the 
“More Moderate Fruit Fast” and then continue indefinitely 
on the “Fruit Diet.” No harm can result from these latter 
diets no matter how long they are persisted in. After try¬ 
ing these more extreme menus from one week to two 
months, however, it is as a general rule, best to go over 
to the regular summer or winter menus. These latter menus 
are more substantial and satisfying for the average person 
and can be continued forever with the most excellent re¬ 
sults. 

Of course, it is expected that each individual who fol¬ 
lows these menus will change and alter them somewhat to 
suit their own individual needs and tastes. There is no 
harm in this as long as the general principles of correct 


149 


diet are largely adhered to. It is in fact intended that all 
of these menus should only act as “simple menus.’* Each 
individual can make up his or her own menus for every 
purpose and for as long a time as is desired—using the fol¬ 
lowing lists only as a general guide. 

The only exception to this procedure is in the “Fruit 
Fast,” where experiment is not advisable no matter how 
monotonous it may prove. Continue to follow it as long 
as it may be necessary and the results will amply compen¬ 
sate you. 



ISO 




FRUIT MENUS 


EXTREME FRUIT FAST 

FIRST DAY: 

Breakfast; 2 oranges 
Lunch: 2 oranges 
Dinner: 2 apples 

SECOND DAY: 

Breakfast; 2 oranges 
Lunch; 2 pears or peaches 
Dinner; 2 apples 

MORE MODERATE FRUIT FAST 
FIRST DAY: 

Breakfast; 3 oranges 
Lunch; 1 orange and 2 apples 
Dinner; 3 apples 

SECOND DAY: 

Breakfast; 1 grapefruit and 2 
oranges 

Lunch; 2 oranges and 2 apples 
Dinner; 8 apples 

THIRD DAY: 

Breakfast; 2 grapefruit and 2 
oranges 

Lunch; lb. grapes, 1 orange 
and 2 apples 

Dinner; 3 apples 

Fruit Diet 

FIRST DAY: 

Breakfast; 3 grapefruit and 1 apple 

Lunch; 3 oranges and 3 apples 

Dinner; 2 pears, 3 apples and lb. 
grapes 


SECOND DAY: 

Breakfast; 2 oranges and 4 apples 

Lunch; 2 pears, 1 orange and 3 apples 

Dinner; lb. grapes, 3 oranges, 4 or 
6 apples 

Fruit and Nut Diet 

FIRST DAY: 

Breakfast; 2 oranges, % lb. walnuts, 
3 apples 

Lunch; 2 pears, lb. pecans or fil¬ 
berts, 3 apples 

Dinner; 2 oranges, lb. walnuts, Yt 
lb. grapes, 3 apples. 

Fruit and Milk Diet 

FIRST DAY: 

Breakfast; 1 orange, 2 glasses milk, 1 
orange, 3 glasses milk, 1 orange 

Lunch; 2 glasses milk, 1 grapefruit, 2 
glasses milk, 1 orange, 1 glass 
milk, 1 orange 

Dinner; 1 orange, 3 glasses milk, 1 
orange, 3 glasses milk, 2 or 3 
oranges 

SECOND DAY: 

Breakfast; 2 oranges, 4 glasses milk, 
2 apples 

LunchT*T°glasses milk, 1 orange, Yt lb. 
grapes, 2 apples 

Dinner; 3 glasses milk, 1 orange, 1 
glass of milk, 2 pears or apples 


161 



SUMMER ME N,U S 


MONDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Strawberries with honey and milk 

1 or 2 oranges 

1 or 2 glasses of milk. 

BUNCH 

Bowl of milk with whole 
wheat crackers 

Whole wheat lettuce and cucumber 
sandwich—no dressing of any kind. 
Peaches or pears. 

DINNER 

Large salad of red radishes, cucumbers, 
green peppers, tomatoes, young green 
onions, celery 

2 or 3 slices of whole wheat bread 
2 or 3 raw apples 

TUESDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Blackberries with honey and milk 

2 or 3 peaches 

1 or 2 glasses of milk 
BUNCH 
H lb. grapes 

2 bran or whole wheat biscuits 
Glass of milk 

Yi, lb. cherries or 2 apples. 

DINNER 

Salad—consisting of lettuce, shredded 
raw carrots, shredded raw cabbage 
and celery. 

Vegetable soup—consisting chiefly of 
carrots, celery, leeks, parsley, small 
amount of green peas with pod or 
string beans. 

Dish of huckleberries 
Plums 

WEDNESDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Raspberries with honey and milk 
2 pears 
Bran Muffins 
Milk 

BUNCH 

Cottage cheese with buttermilk 
Watermelon 

DINNER 

Combination Salad 
Corn-on-cob 

Boiled Brussels Sprouts with baked 
potato 
Rhubarb 
Gooseberries. 

THURSDAY 

BREAKFAST 
Casaba Melon 

Sliced peaches with honey and milk 
Milk. 


BUNCH 

Brown rice with honey and milk 
Lettuce and radish sandwich 
Pure lemonade 

DINNER 

Combination salad 
Boiled string beans, peas with pod, 
spinach 
Applesauce 
Strawberries 

FRIDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Cantaloupe 
2 or 3 pears 
Milk 

BUNCH 

Figs, raisins and dates 
Honeydew melon 
Pure orangeade 

DINNER 

Lettuce and Tomato Salad 
Asparagus, beets, baked potato 
Apricots 
Apples. 

SATURDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Raspberries with honey and milk 
Whole wheat toast with honey 
Milk 
Grapes 

BUNCH 

Lettuce and cucumber sandwiches 
Buttermilk 
Cherries. 

DINNER 

Combination salad with young onions 
Corn-on-cob 

Boiled cauliflower, onions, Brussels 
sprouts. 

Loganberry or grape-juice 
Whole wheat crackers 
Fruit. 

SUNDAY 

BREAKFAST 
Watermelon 
Whole wheat muffins 
Milk 

DINNER 

Combination salad 
Small piece of broiled, fresh killed 
fowl if desired 
Applesauce 

Spinach, asparagus, celery 
Huckleberries 
Lemonade. 

SUPPER 

Fresh tomato soup 

Lettuce and farmer cheese sandwiches 
on whole wheat bread 
Home-made whole wheat cake. 
Lemonade. 


152 




WINTER 


MENUS 


MONDAY 

BREAKFAST 
1 or 2 oranges 

3- or 2 shredded wheat biscuits with 
honey and milk (milk can be tepid if 
desired) 

1 or 2 slices whole wheat bread with 
home-mad« jam (preserved only with 
orown sugar), or butter (spread very 

thinly) 

1 or 2 glasses of milk 
EUNCII 

2 lettuce and tomato sandwiches on 
whole wheat bread—no dressing 

Milk 

1 or 2 apples 
DINNER 

Combination salad — consisting of 3 
current raw vegetables sliced—no 
dressing 

Boiled carrots, parsnips, spinach 
1 or 2 apples 
No bread 

TUESDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Grapefruit 

Cornflakes with honey and> milk 
Postum or cocoa 

1 or 2 slices whole wheat bread 
with honey 

BUNCH 

Lettuce and tomato salad 
Milk 

Whole wheat or bran muffins 
Apples 
DINNER 
Vegetable soup 

Boiled cabbage, beets, onions, peas 
with pod 
Stewed prunes 
No bread 
Apples 

WEDNESDAY 

BREAKFAST 
1 or 2 pears 

Wheatena with honey and milk 
Whole wheat muffins 
Milk 

BUNCH 

Combination salad 
Dates and nuts 
» Milk 

Baked apple 
DINNER 

Lettuce and tomato salad 
Cauliflower, spinach, baked potato, 
carrots (eat jacket of potato) 

1 or 2 apples 

THURSDAY 

BREAKFAST 

1 or 2 oranges 

Grape-nuts with honey and milk 
' Whole wheat toast with honey 
Milk 


BUNCH 

2 lettuce and tomato sandwiches on 
whole wheat bread 
Buttermilk 
1 or 2 apples 
DINNER 

Fresh tomato soup 
Lettuce and tomato salad 
Onions, parsnips and beets 
Celery 

1 or 2 apples 

FRIDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Grapes 

Shredded wheat with honey and milk 
Whole wheat toast with cottage cheese 
Milk 

BUNCH 

Nuts, raisins, flgs, celery 
whole wheat muffins 
Milk 

DINNER 

Combination salad 
Baked potato with jacket 
Spinach, carrots 
Baked apple 

SATURDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Grapefruit 

Cornflakes and milk 
Whole wheat bread with honey 
Postum or cocoa 

BUNCH 

Lettuce and tomato salad 
Milk 

whole wheat biscuits 
Apples 

DINNER 

Vegetable soup 

String beans, spinach, cabbage, peas 
with pod 
Applesauce 

SUNDAY 

BREAKFAST 

Oranges 

Milk 

DINNER 

Combination salad 
Small piece of fresh-killed fowl, if 
desired 

Baked potato, spinach, rhubarb 
Nuts 
Apples 

SUPPER 

Whole wheat sandwiches consisting of 
farmer cheese mixed with home-made 
jelly 

Cocoa or milk 


153 




The Best Foods to Eat, in the Order of 
Their Relative Values, Are: 


FIRST—Fruits and Berries. Berries of every sort, 
Pineapple, Oranges, Grapes, Grape-fruit, Lemons, Apples, 
Plums, Pears, Cherries, Persimmons, Peaches, Apricots. 

Dried-fruits, such as Prunes, Dates, Figs, Raisins, etc. 
(Avoid the bleached varieties.) 

And practically every other kind of fruit. 

Bananas as an article of regular diet are not advisable, 
however, except for people possessing good digestive 
powers. 

SECOND—Vegetables. Lettuce, Spinach, Water¬ 
melons, Muskmelons, Cantaloupes, Pumpkins, Squash, and 
the rest of the melon family. Celery, Cabbage, Water¬ 
cress, Rhubarb, Parsley, Brussels Sprouts, Savoy Cabbage, 
Scotch Kale, Carrots, Leek, Endive. 

Next to these in general value to the body are: Cu¬ 
cumbers, Tomatoes, Green Peppers, Radishes, Onions, As¬ 
paragus, Beets, Cauliflower, Ochra, Parsnips, fresh String 
Beans. 

THIRD—Vegetables to be eaten sparingly. Turnips, 
Potatoes, Peas, Beans, Lentils. Peanuts, though usually 
included in the pea family, must be given special mention, 
as it is one of the very hardest foods to digest. 

FOURTH—Grains and cereals to be eaten sparingly. 
These should always be eaten in their whole or natural 
state and sparingly, as the body does not require much of 
them and eating these foods in quantity is injurious. Not 
more than half a pound a day of such foods for anybody 
is a good rule. All grains and cereals are included in this 
category. For instance: 


154 


Whole wheat bread, Shredded wheat, Corn flakes. 
Whole corn bread or muffins. Pumpernickel or whole rye 
bread, Wheatena, Whole Buckwheat, Brown rice. Unpearled 
barley. Last of all and least of all oats or oatmeal. 

Milk, sour milk, buttermilk, fresh white cheese and 
cream are good foods, but cheese and cream are rather 
heavy for the average person. Honey is excellent for sweet¬ 
ening purposes, also to a degree maple sugar and ordinary 
brown sugar. 

Avoid white sugar and saccharine, and all products 
into which they enter. They are very harmful to the teeth, 
bones and in fact to the entire body. 

Nuts of all kinds, though we refer to them last of all, 
yet they rank highest in food value, being slightly deficient, 
however, in mineral salts. Therefore they should be eaten 
sparingly except in winter time, when (next to fruits) they 
are the very best of foods. 



155 



HOW TO GAIN WEIGHT 


People who are under-weight are usually of a nervous 
temperament, though this is of course not true in every 
case. 

It may be taken as an axiom, however, that if you 
would gain weight, the first rules to observe are,—“don’t 
fret,—don’t worry,'—don’t be too intense or too emotional 
about things, especially things that don’t really count.” 

For thin people the Health Menus (which you will 
find in this book) will prove a good start towards gaining 
weight, because they contain a balanced natural diet,— 
while people who are under-weight are so, largely because 
of wrong and unbalanced diets. 

Add gradually to this menu a little more milk and a 
few added slices of whole-wheat bread,—and after a while 
a baked potato or two,—now and then,—never stuff your¬ 
self, however. Eat only when you are hungry and while 
you are hungry. 

Take long slow walks or walks at a moderate pace. 
Exercise daily—for exercise developes your muscles and 
makes room for additional weight. 

Dumbell exercise and weight-lifting are also helpful 
in building up a man’s or a boy’s body,—but such strenu¬ 
ous exercise is not necessary for women. 

Plenty of sleep is also an essential in increasing weight. 
Also remember to drink water whenever you are thirsty. 
Don’t delay hours at a time before taking a drink as long 
as you feel the need for it. But don’t drink just for the 
sake of gaining weight. 


1S6 


HOW TO REDUCE WEIGHT 


Over-weight and Under-weight as Applied to the 
Human Body 

The causes for the above conditions are many, but the 
chief cause in both cases is wrong diet and either insuffi¬ 
cient activity or wrong activities. 

Fat people nearly always eat far more than they should 
and nature takes the surplus nourishment and stores it 
away all over the body in the form of fat. 

Lack of activity keeps the fat on the body after over¬ 
eating and wrong-eating have put it there. 

An active body can never be really fat,—so the person 
who is over-weight must cultivate the habit of taking long 
brisk walks, and of going through a system of exercise 
daily, such as you will find in these pages. 

Other activities must also be resorted to, if necessary, 
to keep both body and mind brisk and active. 

The diet for a fat person should consist as much as 
possible of raw fruits and raw green vegetables. These 
are not fattening and will soon reduce over-weight without 
harming the body in the least. 

Bread, cereals, pastries, candies, milk and fatty stuffs 
must be avoided altogether or eaten very sparingly by the 
person who is overweight. 

No fat-reducing medicines should be used. Their effect 
on the general health is very destructive. 

No special garments should be worn as these also are 
very injurious. 


157 


EXERCISE 

The bible says man must earn his living by the sweat 
of his brow. Nature says the same thing. But if a man 
insists on earning his living by being a lawyer, an execu¬ 
tive or an office worker of some sort or following some 
other sedentary occupation which requires very little 
physical exertion and thus causes very little sweat, he must 
find other means of bringing perspiration to his brow. 

Until a few short years ago, ninety percent of the 
people had to earn their living by cultivating the soil or 
some other form of hard work. Little by little however, 
modern inventions have done away with the need for 
physical labor on the part of most men and women. Modern 
transportation has even taken away the need for walking. 
Natural man had to climb the trees, chase after animals 
or flee from them. He had to throw stones, carry a heavy 
club on his shoulder, handle a spear and a bow, etc. and 
make long pilgrimages in search of new hunting grounds 
or new living places. His wife carried the family’s belong¬ 
ings as well as one or two infants on her back or in her 
arms. Modern men and women need do none of these 
strenuous things in order to earn a living or to get about. 
Nevertheless, the bodies that men and women have today 
have been inherited from their sturdier ancestors, and the 
same need for exercise and movement exists for people 
today as ever existed in the past. The body that has been 
developed and built up by countless centuries of tree 
climbing, forest-ranging, canoeing, hunting, fighting, agri¬ 
culture, home building and artisanship, cannot of a sudden 
be made idle and continue to look and to function as of old. 

Men cannot suddenly shut themselves indoors and 
substitute the scrape of a pen or the touch of a lever for 
the club and the scythe and the axe and still retain strong 
and robust bodies, good lungs and sound nerves. Exercise 
is man’s modern substitute for the natural activities of 
the past and unless we exercise daily, the body which was 
kept hard by the instinctive need for food and shelter and 
safety, begins to soften and weaken from lack of normal 

158 


activity. It is not a question of choice whether we wish 
to exercise or not—we must exercise or play active physical 
games if we are to keep fit at all. 

WHAT EXERCISE IS BEST? 

There are hundreds of different exercises and there are 
scores of methods of exercising that differ widely one from 
the other. The devotee of each system believes that his 
system is the best of all and that no other system is very 
much worth while. The fact is that practically every 
system of exercising has its value and that while one will 
prefer one system of exercise, another will prefer a different 
system. An individual who has found a good system from 
which he has derived great benefit and with which he is 
well satisfied, will hardly care to look around for another 
and perhaps better system. Though practically all exercise 
is good, some systems undoubtedly hold a decided advant¬ 
age over others and if one will look long enough, one 
may find better exercise-methods, no matter how good the 
system may be that is already being followed. The very 
best of all systems however is perhaps a combination of 
the best elements in all the better and more effective and 
more sensible systems in use. 

Many years of investigation in this field will always 
lead the sensible observer to the realization, that no one 
man has the entire truth on this subject, and a system based 
on the best elements in all the other good systems ought 
to have advantages over any individual system. As a matter 
of fact, this has been proven to be so true that it is the 
greatest pride of the athlete when he can say “I am an all- 
around athlete.'' No matter what his hobby or specialty 
may be, he wants to be considered as one who is wide in 
his experience and acquirements. He likes nothing better 
than to say that he has mastered many systems of exercise 
and activity, and the true all-around athlete will always 
credit the value of other systems aside from the one he 
may like the best. 


159 


AN ALL-AROUND SYSTEM 


The true all-around system of exercise to be followed 
at home should combine light calisthenics without appara¬ 
tus, done smoothly and easily, as well as movements that 
are more strenuous, though done with apparatus. There 
should also be a little light dumbell work, a snatch of in¬ 
termediate dumbell work and where possible, a little of 
occasional heavy weight lifting. Where convenient, the 
horizontal bar should be installed in a doorway and used 
at least for chinning, though other bar work may be in¬ 
dulged in as well. Springs and pulleys may be used oc¬ 
casionally where room and other considerations permit. A 
little resistance work in which one muscle is opposed to 
the other, is also beneficial if large and graceful muscles 
arc to be developed. 

Real strength cannot be built up on a succession of 
light movements alone. The doing of light movements 
for a great length of time only enables one to do a great 
many more light movements, although it also builds up a 
certain amount of strength. For real development, however, 
some form of resistance is necessary, for nature only de¬ 
velops a muscle as necessity dictates. When one attempts 
to lift a reasonably heavy weight, the muscles do their 
best to respond and in time it is possible to lift such a 
weight, through the increased size and strength of the 
muscles. 

If a child in school were kept doing the same sums 
over and over again and their difficulty was not increased 
at all, the child’s brain would not develop very much. Only 
the increasing difficulty of its work can force the mind 
to develop in order to keep pace. The same thing holds 
true of the body. 

The accompanying system of exercise is so arranged 
as to give the body ease and swiftness of movement as 
well as to develop it to a certain extent. If it is fully 
followed for ten to fifteen minutes daily, it will help greatly 
to keep the body fit and fine. 


160 


If an all-around development of the finest sort is de¬ 
sired, then the individual will have to go further, and learn 
to do the advanced exercises that combine the best elements 
not only in calisthenics, but in the apparatus work that 
gets ultimate results. 

No great athlete in the history of the world ever built 
up his body on light movements alone. This latter state¬ 
ment should be remembered by all who seek real strength 
and perfect development. However, for the average man 
or woman, a better combination of health-giving move¬ 
ments without apparatus could hardly be found. It retains 
the best in several of the most famous exercise systems of 
the present day. 

When Is The Best Time To Exercise? 

The best time is about four to six in the afternoon,— 
for then the internal heat of the body is at its highest 
and all the body powers are at their best. For practical 
reasons, however, the best time to exercise is shortly after 
rising and before eating. To exercise at this time is to 
make a habit of it such as will be hard to break. 

How Much Exercise Should The Average 
Man or Woman Do Each Day? 

From five to ten minutes every day is better than 
two hours exercise twice a week. Thoug'h twenty minutes 
to half an hour’s exercise each day would not be too much 
if it were strictly adhered to. Five or ten minutes a day 
is a most practical limit because one is more certain to 
stick to it, especially if so little will help one to keep 
ht,—and it will if it is done properly. 


16 X 


Mr. William Bullock, formerly sergeant in the United 
States Army, now instructor in the Ross Gymnasium and 
Health Institute, 1416 Broadway, New York City, poses 
for the following exercises. 

Mr. Bullock is a splendid example of what real health 
and development will do. 

While serving overseas, he was poisoned with chlorine 
gas, the deadly effect of which is well known. On account 
of his splendid physique and lung power however, Mr. 
Bullock lived through it and is now as healthy and active 
as ever before. 

Shortly after the war, Mr. Bullock captured the heavy¬ 
weight boxing championship of the United States Army. 
He still possesses the gold belt which is emblematic of 
this honor. He has never been defeated in boxing or in 
wrestling. 

It is doubtful if a better built man can be found any¬ 
where in the world. 

He is a true and remarkable example of what natural 
living and effective exer^cise can accomplish. 


162 > 





163 


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164 


First Position. Lie flat on your back. Lace fingers behind head. Come up to 

sitting position. Repeat from five to fifteen times. 


















165 


Second Position. This is the second position of exercise No. 2. As the 
illustration shows, the body should be brought as far down as pos¬ 
sible, the elbows being brought past the knees. 







166 


Lie flat on back,—clasp one hand over the other underneath the lower back. Press 
hands on floor and swing legs up and over until the flnal position finds the body 
doubled up,—with the feet close together, toes touching floor and the knees rigid 
as shown in the above illustration. Repeat from five to fifteen times. 











167 


Spread legs apart while sitting upright. Clasp hands behind head. Bring the head 
forcibly over towards one knee. Sit up in first position and bend over towards 

other knee. Repeat from ten to thirty times. 










168 


Clasp hands behind back. Swiftly bend the body as far over as possible. At the 
same time the arms should be thrown forward as shown in this illustration. Come 
back to rigid upright position. Repeat five to fifteen times. 












stand erect, legs far apart, arms thrust out horizontally straight 
from shoulders. Bend far over as shown in illustration. Touch 
toes with hand. The other arm should be swung up with the same 
motion of the body. While the body remains bent forward, the 
position of the arms is reversed. Do this with spirit but not too 
rapidly. Repeat ten to thirty times. 


169 







THE HORIZONTAL DOORWAY BAR 

The accompanying illustrations show the doorway bar 
and several exercises that can be done on this bar. 



Fig. 1 


Many other exercises can be done very effectively on it, 
as anyone who has ever used horizontal bars, knows. 

“Chinning” the bar, is incomparably the best exercise 
for the biceps, chest and upper back. This exercise consists 


170 































of grasping the bar with the arms full stretch above the 
head. The body is then raised until the chin is above the 
bar. The body is then lowered and raised as many times 
as one desires or is able to do it. See illustrations 1 and 2. 



Fig. 2 


You catch hold of the bar the same as in “chinning” 
and you swing your feet and then your body through the 
loop of your arms. You then lower your body more and 


171 

































more until you have described almost a complete circle or 
loop, as in illustrations 3, 4 and 5. 

You can do this as many times as you like. But re¬ 
member to go slow in the beginning. Take it easy and 
you’ll master it in time. 



The “dip” can be done directly on the floor, but the 
lower horizontal bar affords a much more effective posi¬ 
tion. Besides it keeps the face from coming in contact 
with the floor. It is also the most convenient and the 
most pleasant way. The “dip” is a very simple exercise. 


172 

















One bends down and catches hold of the bar with both 
hands. The feet are then thrust back until the almost rigid 
body is at a sharp angle to the floor. The body is then 
lowered until the chest touches the bar and the body is 
raised by the strength of the arms alone. After a few at¬ 



tempts, it should be possible for anyone to do it a number 
of times. See illustrations 6 and 7. 

The bar is removable and need not be in the door¬ 
way except when in use. It is an article of great merit, 


X73 















easily attached and does not wear out. Some of these 
bars have been in constant use for ten years and appear 
to be still as good as when they were first put up. They 
will support a weight two to three times as great as they 
will ever be called upon to hold. 



In various department stores and sporting goods shops, 
where doorway bars of any other design are sold, the price 
for one bar with one set of sockets, is usually from three 
to five dollars. This bar with two sets of sockets, can be 
had for three dollars. The ordinary bar sold for this pur- 


174 















pose does not fit properly in the ordinary doorway. The 
sockets usually interfere with the closing of the door. The 
bar is also not fixed firmly and lifts off at the top so there 
is danger of the bar coming out of the sockets while it is 
in use. The bar pictured here cannot possibly come loose 
except when it is desired to detach it, and it takes exactly 
one second to do this. The ordinary sockets are made 



of iron. The sockets that come with this bar are made 
of bronze. They never wear out nor rust and always look 
more like an ornament in the doorway than the holders 
for such a useful exerciser. 

Nothing in the world will so build up the upper body 
as chinning the bar or other upper bar work. There is 
little that is half as good for the lower body as the exercise 
on the lower bar which is accomplished while sitting on 
a chair, hooking the feet under the lower bar, bending 


175 




















backward and returning to a sitting position. This 
exercise is a favorite amongst professional athletes, es¬ 
pecially fighters and wrestlers. It is the greatest abdominal 
strengthener known. It has no equal. Satisfaction is 
guaranteed to purchasers of this bar. 

As the photographs of Mr. Bullock in this issue show, 
his biceps are powerfully developed. Few men can cope 
with him in this regard. Like nearly all perfect athletes 
or others who have powerful biceps, he developed them on 



the horizontal bar. Realizing the importance of such a 
bar in every home, Mr, Ross set about designing one. 
Simple as this apparatus is in appearance, it took more 
than two hundred designs before these sockets were finally 
made so strong and light and small at the same time. Each 
one will hold up not less than seven hundred pounds and 
^^ yet they are only little golden shells of metal. 

If you want one of these truly wonderful bars, send 
$3.00 in cash or money order to Edwin J. Ross, 1416 
Broadway, New York City, and we will promptly send 
your bar (prepaid) with full instructions as to its varied 
uses, and also exactly how to put it up. 


X76 




















ALBERT STOGEL, ONE OF MY PUPILS 


Mr. Stogel came to me about five months ago weak and 
sickly. He suffered from a dozen ailments, particularly neuritis 
and constipation. He is in perfect Health now. 


Lack of space prevents the showing of more photo¬ 
graphs of my pupils who have been graduated from my 
present gymnasium at 1416 Broadway, New York City. 

A list of my pupils would include some of the most 
famous men in public life, who have come to me for 
personal instruction. Some of the best known physical 
culture experts of today would also figure in such a list. 
They have been developed by me and through my methods. 
It is 'not however, very feasible for them to openly admit 
that I have had a hand in developing them. For business 
and other purposes, they could hardly do this without 
injuring themselves. 

If you wish to build up a powerful body and superb 
health under my personal direction, I am prepared to take 
you as one of my pupils. 

I am limiting my gymnasium instruction to two or 
three hours a day and I am only accepting a small number 
of pupils. However, as soon as some are built up there is 
room for others. 

No matter what is wrong with you, natural methods 
of eating and exercising will drive away your weaknesses 
and place good health in their stead. 

I have achieved results within the last six months in 
particular, that would astound the entire world were they 


177 










178 


ALBERT STOGEL 











sufficiently known. However, 1 am satisfied to get these 
results and let them become known through the individuals 
that I have helped and through their friends. In the course 
of time, the truth must be known. 

If you want to share in the benefits that others are 
constantly achieving in my wonderful health and strength 
building institution, write to me or call at my gymnasium 
any week-day evening from 5 to 7 P. M. During these 
hours I am free, as a rule, to meet those who are interested 
m my work. 

I devote several hours a week to the instruction of 
women. Knowledge of the results I am obtaining in 
teaching women how to live robust and healthy lives, 
would greatly inspire many who feel that they must remain 
semi-invalids or underweight, overweight or shapeless all 
their lives. Nature never intended anyone to live a half 
life. Learn to lead a full, normal, happy existence. 

In conclusion, let me say that I have had people come 
to me within the last few months who were as near to being 
utter weaklings as can be imagined. They have been af¬ 
flicted with anything ranging from heart trouble, to hernia 
and clear across the entire field of physical weaknesses 
and ailments. They are now well, robust, even powerful. 
Common sense, experience and sympathetic and able hand¬ 
ling have changed them into unusually healthy and vigor¬ 
ous individuals. There is no reason why you cannot be 
healthy and strong provided you go about it in the right 
way. I will gladly show you that way. 


179 


A COURSE BY MAIL 


For those who cannot take a direct personal course 
from me, I have outlined a personal course suited to each 
individual which I teach by mail. This latter course is 
utterly and entirely different from any that has so far 
been taught anywhere except to my personal pupils in my 
health institute. 

It is a progressive course which begins at the 
beginning and goes on from stage to stage until the body 
has been completely built up. 

All bad habits are handled and overcome. All ailments 
and weaknesses are attacked according to the condition 
of the individual pupil. 

It is not a stereotyped course of ten or twelve lessons 
which is the same for every case. Each pupil is taught 
by me as though he were in my gymnasium and I had him 
directly in hand. I advise, instruct and encourage. I help 
him over difficulties and I do not let go until we are both 
satisfied with the result. 

If you are interested, kindly write to me at 1416 Broad¬ 
way, and I will advise you further regarding this course. 


180 


INTERNAL IRRIGATION 


There is a very efifective method of taking the 
internal bath, which has been invented by the author. 
This is administered by means of .a special apparatus. An 
enamel can or a large rubber bag holding from three 
quarts to one gallon of water is used in connection with 
a specially devised hard rubber pipe, at the end of which a 
small nozzle of varied design is placed. 

This arrangement somewhat resembles a Meerschaum 
pipe. The nozzle, which enters the bowel, takes the place 
of the tobacco bowl in the pipe. A positive acting faucet 
arrangement is placed at the other end of the hard rubber 
pipe. This faucet permits the water to flow or stops it 
instantly or lessens the flow to any degree desired. It is 
positive acting and cannot come loose. 

The entire arrangement is a very cleanly and sanitary 
one and makes of the internal bath, a comfortable and 
hygienic affair. It also makes possible the practise of in¬ 
ternal irrigation which differs somewhat from the internal 
bath. 

Internal irrigation is a method of permitting water to 
enter the bowel without attempting to retain it to any 
extent. With a large quantity of water in the holder, the 
water can be permitted to enter and to leave at will, carry¬ 
ing the waste material with it continually. Instead of 
directly washing the entire bowel, the water may not even 
enter the greater part of the bowel. Instead, it is used 
to stimulate peristaltic action or movement of the bowel 
by the gentle stimulation of the water coming in contact 
with the lower reaches of the colon and also by the heat 
of the water. 


181 


This method has been considered by many scientific 
observers as being much superior to ordinary internal bath¬ 
ing. The bowel is not made flaccid by this method. En¬ 
largement of the bowel as a result of the retention of 
great quantities of water, is avoided. The time used in 
taking the internal bath is reduced. The cleanliness of 
this form of bathing in which the hand is not continually 
used in the region of the anus, either for the removal of 
the nozzle or other such purposes, appeals even to those 
who balk at the thought of the ordinary internal bath. 

Those who are interested in internal irrigation should 
write to the author. 

The price of the entire apparatus for internal irriga¬ 
tion is $8.50. This includes a special large bag or enamel 
can, as preferred. Absolute satisfaction is assured. 

Aside from internal irrigation, the taking of the or¬ 
dinary internal bath is likewise facilitated and made much 
more hygienic by this special apparatus. 




The following is a short list of some of the truly 
modern physicians who have thrown medicine overboard 
and are practicing and writing on natural methods: 
W. R. C. Latson, M. D.; E. H. Dewey, M. D.; W. E. 
Forest, M. D.; Susanna W. Dodds, M. D.; Rachael 
Swain, M. D.; John Ellis, M. D.; Louis Kuhne, M. D.; 
D. H. Jacques, M. D.; Geo. H. Taylor, M. D.; Geo. H. 
Patchen, M. D.; and others. 



182 


1 




NATURE’S MEDICINE 


The following were prepared by an experienced Cali¬ 
fornia Naturopath, and undoubtedly contain some valuable 
health hints. These are surely better than the drug store 
products: 

_ * _ 


ATMONDS 

Useful in cases of dysentery and 
affections of the urinary organs ; ex¬ 
cellent for brain, muscle and. nerves. 
All nuts, being a strong food, should 
not be eaten late in the day, or be¬ 
tween meals, but should be taken with 
plenty of fresh fruit only as a com¬ 
plete meal. 

APri.ES 

“The King of Fruits.’’ Good for hot 
and bilious constitutions. All who 
suffer with acidity, gout, jaundice, in¬ 
digestion, sluggish liver, nervousness, 
skin eruptions and allied troubles will 
find them beneficial. They promote 
sound, and restful sleep. 

.APRICOTS, PE.ACIIES, XECT.AKINES 

Very good for those suffering with 
worms and consumption. 

.AKTICIIOKES 

Very useful in cases of dropsy and 
jaundice. 

ASPARAGUS 

Easily digested; exerts a gentle, 
stimulating action, inducing perspira¬ 
tion, cleansing lungs and kidneys ; ex¬ 
cellent in asthma, consumption and 
Bright’s disease. 


BEETS 

Promote digestion, are good for af¬ 
fections of the brain, eyes, jaundice, 
erysipelas and all skin diseases. 
Leaves to be used like spinach. 

BLACKBERRIES 

Very good in diarrhoae, dysentery, 
fevers, kidney diseases. 

CABBAGE 

Antiscorbutic; good for afflictions 
of the eyes, asthma, consumption, 
gout, scurvy ; in building enamel of the 
teeth, nails and hair. 

C.AROB OR LOCUST PODS 

A valuable food ; good for persons 
with hilious or nervous temperament. 

CARROTS 

Good in cases of asthma, nervous¬ 
ness and dropsy; beautify complexion 
and hair. 

CAULIFLOWER 

A variety of cabbage and. has simi¬ 
lar food value. 

CELERY 

Excellent for brain fag, neuralgia, 
rheumatism, scrofula, gout, sciatica 
and obstructions of the liver and kid¬ 
neys. 


183 





Nature’s Medicine —Continued 


CHERRIES 

The black are good for stone and 
gravel ; red for removing tough phlegm 
humours. 

COCOANUT 

An excellent food ; the fresh nut, 
ground and* mixed with its own milk 
will expel tapeworms ; the milk is use¬ 
ful in all cases of fever and exhaus¬ 
tion. 

CRANBERRIES 

Good for cancer, liver troubles, bile, 
scurvy, erysipelas ; makes an excellent 
drink in asthma, fevers, etc. 

CUCUMBERS 

For acne and ulcers of the bladder, 
erysipelas and other inflammations ; 
improve the complexion. 

CURRA NTS (BUA CK) 

Form one of the most useful fever 
beverages, also good for coughs, colds, 
sore mouth and throat. 

CURRANTS (RED OR WHITE) 

See cranberries. 

DANDEUION 

Good for ague, consumption, dys¬ 
pepsia, dropsy, gravel, liver and kid¬ 
ney troubles. The root makes an ex¬ 
cellent drink, a great blood food. 

DATES 

An excellent food; good for those 
with poor circulation, as they give 
heat to the whole body. 

ELDERBERRIES 

Excellent for sore throat, coughs, 
colds, etc. 


ENDIVE 

Good for liver, kidney or heart 
trouble; dimness of sight, for fevers, 
scurvy, jaundice. 

FENNEL 

Gives great relief in obstructions of 
the liver, spleen and gall; useful in 
jaundice, obesity, etc. 

FIGS 

An excellent food ; an invaluable aid 
in all complaints of the liver ; also for 
cancer, dropsy, scurvy, etc. 

FILBERTS 

Good for those who follow hard out¬ 
door labor. 

GARLIC 

A stimulant, and good for asthma, 
dropsy, fevers, hysteria and. worms. 

GOOSEBERRIES 

Good for liver and stomach affec¬ 
tions. 

GR.\PES 

“The Queen of Fruits’’ ; rich in chlo¬ 
rine, glucose, iron, lime, magnesium, 
phosphoric acid, potash, silicic acid, 
.soda, sulphuric acid, tartaric acid, etc. 
Grapes are excellent blood builders, 
good for consumption, dyspepsia, fev¬ 
ers, liver and. kidney complaints, piles, 
etc. 

HONEY 

A concentrated food, easy of assim¬ 
ilation, imparts warmth and energy. 
As a remedial agent has many uses, 
excellent in throat and lung affections 
and in diseases of bladder and kidneys. 
Is a laxative and sedative. 


184 




Nature’s Medicine— Coritinued 


1 


LEMONS 

Good foi' biliousness, dyspepsia, low 
fevers, gout, rheumatism, scurvy, liver 
and kidney troubles. Applied exter¬ 
nally, a powerful anti-scorbutic. 

LETTUCE 

Contains much iron and therefore 
good, for anemic persons ; recommend¬ 
ed in insomnia, irritation of the stom¬ 
ach, dyspepsia, etc. 

MELONS 

An excellent kidney cleanser. 

MINT 

Good for bowel complaints, affec¬ 
tions of the heart, smalliiox, etc. 

ONIONS 

Are food for the blood and cleanse 
the whole system ; good for insomnia, 
nervousness, coughs, etc. 

ORANGES 

Good, for bronchitis, asthma, liver 
and heart troubles, for toning up the 
system and purifying the blood. 

PARSLEY 

An excellent remedy for dropsy, 
gravel, kidney and liver troubles, 
syidiilitic affections and enlarged 
glands. 

PARSNIPS 

Good for dyspeptics. 

PEARS 

Are laxative when soft and ripe. 

PEAS 

Are good for hypochondria. 


PINEAPPLE 

An excellent remedy for diphtheria, 
sore throat, etc. 

PO.MEGRA NATES 

Good for sore throat, lung com¬ 
plaints, hemorrhages, tape worms, etc. 

POTATOES 

Are strictly nonfermentable and an 
excellent stomach cleanser. 

QUINCES 

And honey are laxatives, good in 
all stomach troubles, and will stop 
v^omiting. 

RADISHES 

Excellent in treating gall stones. 

RAISINS 

Furnish sugar in its purest and most 
concrete form. A fine heat and. energy 
food. 

R.\SPBERRIES 

Good in cholera, sore throat, fevers, 
etc. 

RHUBARB 

Nature’s most wholesome substitute 
for vinegar. A fine tonic and elimi¬ 
nator, good for cancer. 

SAGE 

Valuable in lung complaints, piles, 
rheumatism and for checking flatu¬ 
lency. 


185 



Nature’s Medicine— Continued 


SALT 

(l8 No Food) 

If taken as a mineral is highly in¬ 
jurious and accelerates numerous dis¬ 
eases, such as consumption, gout, rheu¬ 
matism, eczema, etc. 

SPINACH 

Good in anemia, heart disease, piles, 
stomach and kidney trouble. 

STRAWBERRIES 

Are good, for acne, gout, ringworm. 
For outward application the strawber¬ 
ries will cure old wounds, ulcers, sore 
eyes and inflamed parts. 

SUNFLOWER SEED 

Produce a splendid and valuable oil, 
very useful as a food, also for appli¬ 
cation after hot fomentation. 

TAMARINDS 

Useful as a drink in fevers, jaun¬ 
dice, colcte, etc. 

TOMATOES 

Beneficial in dyspepsia, inflamma¬ 
tions, one of the best correctors of the 
liver. Splendid kidney remedy. 


TURNIPS 

An excellent appetizer, good for 
ulcers of the bladder and all skin dis¬ 
eases, and bone material. 

VEGETABLE MARROW (Pumpkin) 

Excellent in fevers and all inflam¬ 
matory diseases. 

WALNUTS 

Pounded with honey are good for 
quinsy and sore throat. 

WATERCRESS 

A powerful blood cleanser, good for 
all obstructions of liver and kid«neys, 
anemia, scurvy, etc. Also useful in 
disorders of the brain and bladder. 


YAMS 

Are anti-spasmodic and good, for epi¬ 
lepsy, fits, St. Vitus dance and uterine 
diseases. 

WHEAT MEAL 

Made into a jelly and mixed with 
honey is good for all lung troubles, 
gout, hoarseness, rheumatism, etc. ; 
also good for chilblains, ulcers and 
boils, if applied externally. 



/ 


186 










INDEX 


Page 

INTRODUCTION . 3 

HEALTH AND DISEASE. 6 

Who is healthy and who is sick? The killing habits. 
Healthy habits. Diagnosis and mortality rates. 

CAN DIET CURE DISEASE?. 11 

What to do in acute disease. The use of medicine in 
a crisis. Diet and chronic disease. 

CARE OF THE HAIR. 15 

Primitive man was never bald. Women rarely lose their 
hair. How to prevent baldness. 

CARE OF THE EYES . 20 

Six exercises for the eyes. 

EAR TROUBLE . 24 

COLDS . 25 

Cause, prevention and cure. How to get rid of a cold. 
Colds come from within. Are colds produced by cold 
or wet weather? Do drafts produce colds? Illustration 
of respiratory organs. 

ASTHMA, CATARRH, BRONCHITIS, HAY FEVER. 34 

TONSILS AND ADENOIDS. 3 5 

THE TEETH AND GUMS—PYORRHEA. 39 

BAD BREATH . 43 

BILIOUSNESS . 44 

COATED TONGUE . 44 


187 















Page 

GOITRE . 4 6 

HEART TROUBLE . 47 

Illustration of the heart. Two methods of treatment, 
medical and natural. Effect of coffee, drugs, laxatives 
on the heart. 

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE . 53 

INDIGESTION . 55 

How heartburn is produced. Illustration of digestive 
organs. 

CANCER . 58 

What is cancer? Does wrong eating cause cancer? 
Where cancer usually occurs. Drugs help to produce 
cancer. What Dr. Mayo says about cancer. 

ULCER OP THE STOMACH. 65 

How pure blood removes ulcers. The effect of surgery. ' 
Nature is never malignant. 

LIVER TROUBLE . 74 

GALL STONES .. 7 6 

DIABETES . 79 

GASTRITIS . 80 

GASES. 80 

CONSTIPATION . 83 

Constipation in children. Cellulose, Nature’s laxative. 

How fruits are acted upon by the body. Whole wheat 
and bran stimulate digestion and elimination. How 
starches paste up the intestine. Boils and skin trouble 
produced by constipation. 

DIARRHEA . 90 

INTERNAL BATH . 92 

FISTULA*.. 9 4 


188 

















Page 

PILES AND HEMORRHOIDS. 95 

RHEUMATISM . 97 

Arthritis, Neuritis, Neuralgia, Lumbago, Sciatica, Gout, 
etc. The acid making foods. Are lemons acid? Rheu¬ 
matic medicines. Medical antidotes. “New medical dis¬ 
coveries.” The natural cure. Rheumatism and wet 
weather. “Rheumatic Baths.” 

KIDNEY TROUBLE. 108 

Illustration of the kidneys and bladder. 

BRIGHT’S DISEASE . HO 

KIDNEY AND BLADDER STONES . HI 

APPENDICITIS . 113 

The function of the appendix. How to treat Appendicitis 

HERNIA AND RUPTURE. 118 

VARICOSE VEINS. 119 

FOOT TROUBLE . 120 

Fallen arches, etc. 

NERVOUSNESS . 123 

Nervousness in men. Nervousness in women. Illus¬ 
tration of nervous system. 

SLEEP AND SLEEPLESSNESS . 128 

CURATIVE BATHING. 130 

How to take the natural bath. The Sitz bath. Cold 
shower. Turkish, Roman and Russian baths. 

THE DIET QUESTION. 135 

How to prove the harmfulness of wrong eating. Medical 
dietetics. Fruit and berries. Meats as compared to 
fruit. The curative diet. Green vegetables. Milk. The 
heavier vegetables. Grains and cereals. Dairy foods. 

Eggs, poultry and meat. 

INTRODUCTION TO MENUS. 149 


189 
















THE FRUIT FAST 


Page 

151 


Fruit diet. Fruit and nut diet. Fruit and milk diet. 

SUMMER MENUS . 152 

WINTER MENUS. 153 

THE BEST FOODS TO EAT IN THE ORDER OF THEIR 

RELATIVE VALUES. 154 

HOW TO GAIN WEIGHT. 156 

HOW TO REDUCE WEIGHT . 157 

EXERCISE . 158 

What exercise is best. An all around system. The best 
' time to exercise. How much exercise is necessary for 
the average person. • Eight exercise illustrations posed 
by Mr. William Bullock. Illustrations of exercises per¬ 
formed on a doorway bar. 

ADVERTISEMENTS . 170 

NATURE’S MEDICINES . 183 


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